The Second
by aslightjump
Summary: In which the Gemini Coven does not hold a monopoly on Prison Worlds. Or, 'Everything in Bonnie Bennett's life has gone sideways thus far, so ending up in an Original's hell world probably shouldn't be the surprise it is.' Back in the real world, Kai Parker is learning life lessons he honestly rather not. 'How to Feel Guilty' is at the top of that list.
1. Prologue

So. A bit of an explanation. This is my first vampire diaries fanfiction and was made solely because the last season both entertained and disappointed me so much that I just had to fiddle around with it. This whole story is just me having fun. The canon will be only loosely followed, **The Originals will be completely ignored** , and I will basically keep my own continuity goes Lord knows the actual show is shit at it.

* * *

She remembered once watching Thor with Caroline, cuddled up together on the couch (and she was under about five blankets and casting warmth charms every ten minutes because it was about thirty-eight degrees and Caroline didn't believe in turning the thermostat above sixty-five and insisted on draping her cold-as-the-grave top half all over Bonnie – _"it's bonding, Bon! Ha! Bonding with Bon. We should do a cable show."-_ So Care had been a little trashed, hushing Bonnie and talking over the movie all in the same breath and ridiculously fixated on Chris Hemsworth's arms.)

Wait. Stop. She doesn't want to think about Caroline.

But in between the spells and in between the chatter she caught a line Thor said to his little scientist girlfriend – about how magic and science were both the same on his world. She had scoffed at it at the time, thinking of how little regular people understood magic, the give and the take of it, emotions and willpower in the place of numbers and measurements.

Now she could almost see his point.

A spell was a formula, and every word was a variable, evolved from thousands of years of testing and experiments. _Thousands_ of years. Bonnie didn't have that kind of time.

The ascendant lay in one palm, a knife in the other, as she watched the sky overhead for her eclipse, the words of the spells looping in an endless circle around her brain. Formula. Variables. All accounted for. She was going home.

 _Thousands of years._ The eclipse begins, her chant begins, knife across her palms and blood everywhere – _'I'm gonna smell like blood forever,' is her first thought when the knife goes in. It's inane, but not as dumb as gaping up at Kai and thinking 'why does he always go for the stomach?' –_ and there is whirring and noise and wind. There is a pull in her head in a direction that she couldn't name but knows is not where she should be headed.

Bonnie's head swims a little and she tries to focus. She thinks of home, _home._ Matt at lifeguard training with her, the growl that ripples under her skin when she touches Tyler, Stefan's voice so gentle as he rescues her from the tomb, Jeremy's palms, Jeremy's laughs, Elena at Christmas time, vampire pancakes and too much bourbon in the glass Damon pours for her.

That couch and Caroline draped all over her. Bonding.

 _Home._ It is her one consistent thought, behind all the Latin. _Home._ She thinks of her Grams and says the spell through a smile and then-

" _ **I can fix it!"**_ _Grams' body is so cold._

 _No,_ Bonnie jolts, trying to block it out. Think of home. Red and white pom-poms. Friday night lights.

 _ **8\. 14. 22.**_ _Bonnie keeps saying she doesn't want to be a witch but she looks at the numbers and looks at the blood from Tanner's body and she feels for the first time down to her bones._ _ **I don't want this.**_

All the dances, all the dresses. Prom Queen with Matt by her side.

 _She is breaking every bone in Alaric's body, hoping against hope that she can do this without Damon's plan and kill the Original within. She looks back at Elena, she tastes blood in her mouth, then everything spasms and everything's white._

 _She is still looking at Elena, but it's the shell of her best friend's bones she's breaking this time. And Bonnie hasn't felt this happy in such a long time._

She is losing the spell, stumbling over the words. Her skin feels slick beneath her nose, a trickling feeling over her lips and down her chin. The tug in her head grows even more insistent, spreading down through her neck, pulling at her heartstrings. _Home_ , she thinks insistently, but it _is_ home she sees, her empty house full of dead people and her. She takes up even less space than the ghosts.

 _They burn Jeremy's body without letting her see it._

Bonnie's grip tightens on the ascendant and she speaks slower. She's losing time. _Please,_ she begs. The tugging sensation pulls at every muscle of her body. She thinks of sleepovers at Caroline's, curled between her and Elena. Thinks of Abby dead on that same bed as Bonnie waits for her to reawaken as a vampire. _Home._

She sees a house, tall and Gothic with one too many spires, and she knows in her gut that it is not a home. She also knows it's not hers. She's never seen it before.

She stops chanting. Tries to drop the ascendant. The pull does not disappear, but she does.

Everything is blindingly white for a moment and then she is stumbling forward on ground far less stable than what she had been standing on before. Her shoes sink into it, then her knees as she falls, then her hands, her bleeding _empty_ hands.

This is not her home. She has spent hours in the forests surrounding Mystic Falls and knows every plant that grows within them. She can even list off their latin names, if she was so pressed. The trees around her are willowy and smooth, the sparse grass beneath her fingers thin-bladed and sharp. This is not her home. This is not a home at all.

There's a certain echo to emptiness that Bonnie has grown to understand intimately in the past few months. Like a hole in the world where all the life fell to the bottom. Everything she does is like tossing a piece of her and listening for the thud when it hits the bottom. It never comes. She could hear it in Kai's head whenever he grabbed at her.

The same echo is here.

She cries until she laughs – or maybe it's the other way around? She'd done everything right, just as she always has, and she still lost. Just as she always has.

Bonnie struggles to her feet, then starts laughing again and sinks back down. A few minutes later, when the laughter has cycled back around to tears and the tears have dried, she tries again. She can't give up. It's not even that she won't, not anymore, she just cannot. She cannot let the universe win like this. Magic has been tossing Bonnie around since the moment she woke up on the cold ground after Emily's spirit hijacked her body when she was sixteen. She can't let it win again. She's a Bennett. She'll find this world's ascendant. She'll find whatever celestial event she need to. She'll gather up all the ingredients and try again.

But as she trudges on the trees grow sparse and something dark looms beyond them. Vast and black and truly a ridiculous amount of spires; the house from before. Her foot cracks a twig when she rears back in surprise and then there is the distinctive whoosh of a body racing through the air way too quickly.

Vampire, she thinks dimly, hands rising far too late to stop whoever's coming.

Between one heartbeat and the next, hands appear on either side of her face, framing it. There is a boy in front of her, dark hair and dark eyes and for one paralyzing second _all she can see is Kai_ but this is not that face. The hair is lighter, the eyes aren't empty, the mouth permanently quirked.

She thinks the same thought she had when she first saw this face. _He looks so much like his brother._

"Kol?" she asks like she doesn't know, because she knows this face, but Kol is dead. She met his ghost. She didn't save him from the other side, she didn't even look for him. Kol is not just dead, Kol is _gone._

His eyebrows raise and his nostrils flare. His grip grows what is probably only marginally tighter to him but makes her wince in pain.

"I don't understand," she says. Kol wasn't part of the spell, the formula, he was never a variable. Ascendant, blood, celestial event, spell. That was all she needed. Why is she here? Why isn't she home? "What did I do wrong?" Her voice sounds so small, even to her own ears. She takes up less space than ghosts. She is barely there under Kol's fingertips.

She and Damon had done the spell, and he had gone home. Why hadn't she? The only difference – the only difference was _her._

"Bonnie Bennett," Kol whispers. His voice is right, and she is startled by how accurately she remembered it. "I hear you. _I hear you._ " The echo of an empty world, the noise of Kai's head, is in his voice.

"I shouldn't be here." She is no more talking to him than he is actually listening to her. "You shouldn't be here." The Prison World was made for Kai, wasn't it?

 _Thousands of years,_ she thinks. _Science and magic._ Her grimoire, some of the writing ancient, with fresher ink scrawled in the margins, improvements and corrections. A theorem, tweaked and perfected until the human race could turn on a light bulb. To achieve the pinnacle of achievement took eons of trial and error and experimentation. Kai's couldn't have been the first.

Kai's clearly wasn't the last.


	2. And I'll Love The World Like I Should

Thanks to all who favorited and followed. Tiny correction: when I said the Originals would be ignored, I mostly meant the second season. But the Originals history will be taken from it.

As for if this is a romance, if its with Kol or Kai, this is honestly for now a "Give Bonnie All the Friends!" Fic and a Parker-family fix it fic because I am a sucker for giant dysfunctional families. There is some Bonkai and Kennett already planned though.

* * *

Newspapers. Bonnie felt as if her entire life was coming down to black ink on crinkly white paper. There wasn't even a crossword in this one.

September 28, 1821. Kol Mikaelson's hell.

Bonnie let the _Louisiana State Gazette_ fall to the table, sinking heavily into a chair. "Why are you here?"

Kol had not spoken much since releasing her earlier. Though she had never had it within her to muster much pity for the youngest, loudest Mikaelson brother, she knew from personal experience how much harder it got to force the words out if one got used to them not being heard and so she waited.

He seemed to move in slow motion now, which was disconcerting. Even as a ghost Kol had been almost manic in his movements. Now his hand seemed to move almost frame-by-frame as he raised it to the bridge of his nose and rubbed.

"Considering," he started slowly, irritation coloring his tone. "Your great grandmother wasn't even born in 1820, I believe that question is more deserving of your answer."

It was a bit disconcerting – she had been alone with Damon, and then Kai, for such a long time that she'd forgotten what other people were like. She could tell you exactly how they would've answered the question: Damon's would've been some long, overly-sarcastic reply that somehow made her feel guilty for even asking and Kai's would've been brutally to the point, slow words like she was a child, with some added jibe about sadism thrown in somewhere that somehow made her feel stupid.

Kol's was either a deflection or a genuine query; maybe both. He wasn't stupid and she knew he must have some idea of what was happening to him, but no idea how much.

"You're in a prison world. Repeating the same day over again, September 28, 1821. Why?"

Damon would've grabbed bourbon by now. Kai would've repeated the same answer from before while somehow saying something completely different. Kol remained silent, hand thudding to the table, dull eyes focusing first on the newspaper, then her.

She met his gaze squarely. She had never, _never_ been afraid of Kol. Even when he was snarling in her face, he always wanted something. Mikaelsons may be prone to petty murder but they always wanted something.

"I asked you first," Kol finally replied.

Bonnie frowned, quirked an eyebrow. "No, you didn't."

Kol leaned forward, opening his mouth to argue with her, then stopped, clearly thinking about the conversation, or lack there-of, that had taken place. Then he chuckled half-heartedly. "No, I didn't. But I suspect you already know the answer to your question. It's a bad day for me. I guess someone thought I was owed a lifetime of bad days.

"Joke's on them, the wanker," he muttered, standing. "I've already been through that. I've already been through worse. This is nothing."

She thought of Kai then, unbidden. Crossbow in hand, threatening to let her bleed to death. Knife in her stomach and leaving her to die. Choking, drugging, and quipping all the while. She hated him so much, and she still wanted him back after he'd left her alone.

Kol hadn't been good with loneliness when he was on a planet full of people. She couldn't imagine he'd be able to handle it for the rest of eternity.

He was facing the window now. When he'd brought her into the house he'd headed straight towards the dining room. She'd caught glimpses of other room as she followed, broken furniture and glass scattered all over the floor. But in here it was pristine and beautiful, a long cherry table with elegantly curved chairs on either side and candelabras everywhere. She absent-mindedly set the wicks to light as she waited.

She had nothing but time here.

Kol turned somewhere along the fourth candelabra. He looked pale even in the candlelight and she wondered how long it had been since he'd eaten. He'd been two breaths away from her and hadn't shown one veiny sign of bloodlust but he was an Original, with centuries of control under his belt.

He waited until the last candle was lit before speaking. "So why are you here, little witch?"

"I got lost," Bonnie said before stopping. Finding the ascendant without Kol would be nightmarishly hard, but escaping from him now that he'd seen her would be downright impossible. He'd want to come with her when she went back. Just the thought of unleashing the Original back onto the world made her cringe.

 _And why is that?_ Some little voice whispered at her. In all the books the voices in people's heads always sounded like someone: their parents, their enemies, their friends. Bonnie couldn't place this voice, had never heard it before. It was whispery, high and soft and _insidious._ She fought down a shiver.

 _You let Damon back out onto the world with a smile on your face. You sacrificed yourself for it. Is he so much better than Kol?_

 _So much better than_ _ **Kai?**_

Bonnie shook her head. She sent Damon back because he was her friend, and for Elena and Stefan who needed him. Who needed Kol, or Kai?

 _Who needs_ _ **you**_ _, Bon?_

"Lost?" Kol snapped, clearly losing patience with waiting out her internal war. "How?"

Damon's victims could fill a cemetery and yet she felt no remorse or guilt for sending him back. Because he was her friend. She wasn't naïve enough to think he'd be better now, that he'd never lose his temper and drain somebody's blood or snap their neck to make himself feel better. But she did it anyway, because he was her friend.

God, her morals were so screwed up. She smothered a few hysterical giggles and looked up at Kol. "I was trapped in a prison world, too."

Kol's eyebrows raised and he scoffed. "Someone wanted to lock up sweet, righteous Bonnie Bennett? What kind of tricks were you pulling when no one was looking, hm?"

"I couldn't escape the Other Side when it collapsed. Neither could Damon Salvatore. We went together." Saying it out loud made her ache for Damon's voice, chiding her for being so sappy. She pressed her lips together and looked away.

"Well, that explains that," Kol said, shrugging. "I can think of plenty of people who'd want to punish Damon Salvatore for all eternity. Still doesn't explain why you're here."

"I got lost," Bonnie repeated, tracing the pattern of the lace table runner with her finger. "I was trying to go home, I had a spell, and it went wrong – or maybe just sideways. I did everything right." She cringed at how whiny the last part sounded, but Kol didn't seem to notice, seizing on one particular detail.

He had a chair pulled up as close to hers as possible with him seated on the edge, folded arms resting on his knees before she could blink. "There's a spell to escape."

"And I ended up here," Bonnie said, choosing to finish her story rather than answer him, leaning as far back into her chair as she could. "I have no idea how."

Kol's head dropped down, shoulders slumping, as he said in a fading voice: "So the spell doesn't work."

Bonnie hesitated. She could say yes, she could stay here forever, save the world from Kol. That would be the noble, selfless Bonnie Bennett thing to do.

 _What has that ever gotten you? Dead Grams, dead Dad, a vampire mother who doesn't love you, dying, dying_ _ **again**_ _, the prison world, a knife to the stomach?_ She could still feel the scars on her skin. They rested there uncomfortably, as if they didn't really belong, as if they weren't supposed to happen to her.

Life shouldn't be like this. She was nineteen years old. She should be happy.

She _could_ be happy. She just had to choose it.

"It works," she said softly. Kol's head pops up almost comically. "I got Damon back through. There was-" She stumbles again, not knowing, hoping, that Kai got lost as well, that he didn't make it back to Mystic Falls. Not really wanting to talk about Kai at all.

"But it didn't work for you?" Kol asked, rhetorically she hoped. Thinking of her failure was becoming a rather miserable pastime for Bonnie.

For now, her theory was that there were more prison worlds than Kai had let on, and not all of them belonging to the Gemini Coven. It made a certain sort of sense; even assuming the Geminis had created the spell all on their very own, which was unlikely, it was a very powerful spell, one that they could've used to barter with other covens and bloodlines.

And then there was the fact that the spell was anchored on Bennett blood. The Geminis didn't do it alone. They had a Bennett witch to aid them, and Bonnie had had enough to of her ancestors whispering in her head to know that Bennett witch would've never let that much power accumulate in a bloodline that wasn't her own.

It still didn't explain why she wasn't able to go home, why she had been pulled here to Kol's world. She had gone over the spell a hundred times in her memory, comparing it with when she had done it with Damon. Nothing was different, except for the fact that it was Damon who left and not her. Maybe something was wrong with her. Maybe she was never going to make it out.

Bonnie clenched her hands in her lap. She couldn't afford to think like that. If she did, it would all be over. _Hope is the only thing keeping me going._

"Little witch?" Kol's voice broke through her reverie. "How did you get out of your prison world?"

"It wasn't mine," Bonnie said automatically, her tone defensive, offended for reasons she couldn't quite place.

Kol waved a hand dismissively. "Whatever. Damon's prison world, then. How did you get out?"

It hadn't been Damon's, either, though she wasn't going to point that out. "There's something called an Ascendant. It basically controls the gateway between this world and the real one. Every world has its own."

It was galling to still be blindly following Kai's information when he had lied about every other thing, but she had nothing more to go on. Kol nodded to himself, finally leaning away from her. Bonnie relaxed shoulders she hadn't even known were so tense.

"Can you find it?" he asked. "I don't know where it is. I mean, obviously, even if I had found it, what would be to me, hm? But you can do a locator spell."

"I don't even know where we are," Bonnie shot back, a little thrown by Kol's pattern of demands. "The paper is from New Orleans but we're out in a freaking swamp, Kol."

Kol looked genuinely offended. "Watch your language, love, this is a _bayou._ And New Orleans is about three miles that way." He pointed back and to the left.

Bonnie rolled her eyes. "Why are you even stuck in an 1821 New Orleans prison world?"

"I told you," Kol replied evenly. "Today's a bad day."

At that he stood, his legs brushing against hers as he moved out of the tight space between their chairs, and crossed the room to a closed door. "I'll find you a map," he said without looking at her, before opening the door and disappearing into the darkness beyond her.

Bonnie had the feeling that he wanted her to stay here, but after nearly six months on her own Bonnie had learned that sitting still with her thoughts was not a good thing. She stood and used the door she had come in, beginning to explore the house.

It was beautiful, every inch of it. The wood of the paneling in the halls was silky smooth under her fingertips as they dragged over it. There were little end tables scattered all along the halls, filled with picture frames with broken glass and no pictures. Bonnie fingered the torn piece of paper hanging in the corner of one, wondering whose house this had been. Had Kol known them? Why chose a place out here when he had the entirety of New Orleans just three miles away?

She didn't linger for long, choosing to enter the first door she found. It was a large galley kitchen, all white wood and stone slab countertops. There was a table shoved close to the walls, and the remains of chairs scattered all around it. Bonnie realized with a sick lurch that they were all missing their legs, the point where they were broken off jagged and sharp.

There was no refrigerator. No built in stove. Bonnie had always loved history, but actually living in it was…frightening, in a way the 1994 prison world wasn't. Bonnie was afraid that she had been started to forget things (sometimes she couldn't remember what the color of Matt's eyes were, or how Elena's laugh sounded) but she could see so clearly her grandmother's kitchen, soft brown wrinkled hands on her smaller ones as her Grams helped her stir some parsley into the soup she was making.

It was cold and empty here. Bonnie left the room quickly.

The next room was a bathroom that she gave only a cursory glance. Across the hall was the wide entrance into the main living area. Tables and chairs destroyed, legs broken off again. The only piece of furniture that remained untouched was a massive leather armchair with a high, winged back. There were two glass decanters on the side closest to the unlit fireplace. One was nearly full of bourbon. The other, nearly empty of blood.

There were more than a few smashed glasses in the ashes of the fireplace and Bonnie had to grin, thinking how dramatic it was to throw the alcohol in the fire. Kol was a Mikaelson, through and through. Always putting on a show.

She nearly danced in place when she noticed the ten foot high bookcase in the dark corner just beyond the fireplace, almost skipping over to it. The Salvatores' had a great library in the boarding house and the public library had always been there in Mystic Falls, but a good chunk of the Salvatores' novels had been in Italian, which she had tried to learn for precisely one month by sheer context clues and a rudimentary understanding of Latin before giving up and the Mystic Falls Library was woefully understocked.

There were a number of books written in French but some she had never even heard of in English. She went to pick one up before she noticed right next to it an original 1812 copy of _The Complete Grimm's Fairy Tales._

She was at the very end of 'Cinderella,' sunk deep into Kol's chair, when he found her again, map in hand.

He perched on the arm of her chair and leaned in close to read the title, then scoffed. "No Jane Austen? You know Frankenstein was just one shelf up. But of course you pick the fairy tales. You never did have an appreciation for the macabre."

"Cinderella's stepsisters just cut off their toes to fit into the glass slipper," Bonnie said dryly, eyes never leaving the page. She was so close to the happy ending.

Kol whistled lowly. "Now that's true dedication to the cause. And all Cinderella did was what, wish on a Fairy Godmother? The stepsisters should've won."

"It's not a cause, it's _love,"_ Bonnie snapped, finally looking up at him. He was far closer than she had realized but sliding away now would only make him laugh. "And besides, Cinderella was kind. That's why she won, as you put it."

Kol rolled his eyes and shook his head, standing up and walking around the chair to pick up the decanter of bourbon. "Kindness rarely wins you anything in the real world. You of all people should know that, Bonnie Bennett."

She held his gaze for what felt like a very long time. She had been kind before, when she didn't take up on his offer to join together and escape the other side. Now he held the map out to her, taking a swig out of the decanter without ever looking away from her, raising his eyebrows in suggestion.

She placed the book down and took it with both hands.

* * *

Kai, it turned out, was not so good with emotions.

No, he thought, he was being too hard on himself. Emotions were hard, and he had never really had them before. Well, not one's like these.

Because he was sitting across from his little sister, his face splitting into a grin against his will at some story she was telling, actually semi-enjoying himself, and the whole thing made him want to vomit.

But that would ruin the whole meal, and he was trying to be good. Why, he had no idea. Honestly, before the merge, he didn't even really have a concept of what good was. Killing his family wasn't, but that was a gimme. That was a conscious choice to do the wrong thing.

 _Zachariah's face slackening, his hands dropping away and into the water-_

Nope. Not going there. Kai was even worse at dwelling than he was at this whole 'feeling' bit. Liv told the next part of her story with particularly emphatic hand gestures that made Jo laugh beside him.

Kai liked to blame it all on the merge, but as he felt warmth spread through him from where Jo's upper arm pressed against his elbow as she shifted in her seat, he knew. Josette had been the only person in the world besides his mother that he had even remotely tolerated before his dad put him in the prison world, but he had always been more jealous of her than anything. Watching her interact with their bratty little siblings, watching how they smiled at her. That was a family, and it was supposed to be his. But Kai was always on the outside, always alone.

Kai had spent his entire life alone. Sitting here like this, with his twin and the little sister who was now actually marginally older than him was something he would be good for even without Luke rattling around in his head.

He knew they weren't really comfortable with him being here. Liv was speaking at hyper speed and Jo couldn't seem to sit still. But they hadn't gotten up and left when he sat down unceremoniously, breaking up their weekly lunch at the Grille. He suspected Liv just wanted even half a chance that she might see a glimpse of her twin again – that and she seemed to be almost as cutthroat as he was – and that why he wasn't tossed through a window, but Josette's was the tolerance he could not puzzle out.

Liv's story, something about an asshole customer that Kai now wanted to track down and cut to ribbons, petered out quietly and those over enthusiastic hands drifted to her lap as her gaze shifted around like she was looking for the next conversation topic. Liv couldn't stand silence. Something the two of them had in common.

Jo noticed the awkward silence settling in and turned to him, not quite meeting his eyes but staring resolutely at the center of his forehead. Her skittishness was adorable and Kai hated himself for just thinking that.

"So," she said shortly. "I haven't heard anything about Bonnie. It's been a month since you guys contacted her in 1994, shouldn't she be back by now?"

Kai, as a rule, did not like to talk about Bonnie Bennett. Just thinking about her was exhausting, endless amounts of guilt and something sadder and more final that he couldn't name. Kai could barely deal with just every day emotions, had locked himself up in Jo's spare bedroom for three days when he actually helped an old lady across the street like he was in the Babysitter's Club – which Josette had laughed her ass off about when he finally broke down and told her. Kai was still put out at her mocking his genuine distress. – so dealing with Bonnie and her prominent lack of _being here_ was a no go in his book.

His voice was gruff when he responded, choosing to look down at his grilled cheese than at his sisters. "She had to go all the way to Nova Scotia, Sissy. That's not a short trip."

"It's like, a twenty hour drive," Liv argued. When both Jo and Kai looked at her quizzically she shrugged. "Tyler and Matt have discussed it in great detail. Plus Bonnie could drive whatever speed she wanted, so like eighteen hours tops. It would only take her two days."

"Well, she would have to stop," Kai reasoned. Liv scoffed.

"Didn't you spend like a whole month with her? You know, before you stabbed her. You're telling me you didn't figure out how crazy determined Bonnie B is in literally every aspect of her life?" Liv's eyes dropped again. "She is a terrifying person."

Kai tried his best to ignore the jibe about his stabbing Bonnie. He tried to ignore the whole thing. The fact was he knew exactly how determined Bonnie was and it was taking her far too long to get back.

What if she had died? It wasn't her prison, Bonnie wouldn't be revived like he was. If she died, that was it. She would never see her home again. She had, for that brief window between learning he murdered his family to being brutalized over the course of several days, been able to stand him enough to talk about home. Or, hell, maybe she would've talked to anybody about it, just to talk about it. To remind herself. He had done that, once or twice, when he started forgetting things about Josette. But for him it was so he would still be able to find her when he got back, no matter how much older she was, so he could do the merge and get rid of her and the stink of her betrayal forever.

Bonnie's voice when she talked about Elena and Caroline and…Matt, maybe? It was unlike anything he'd ever heard. It made his heart almost burn. He was pretty sure part of the reason he hurt her was just to never hear her voice like that again.

"Who knows what she had to do to get the magic in Nova Scotia?" Jo said. "Maybe it was a long process, or maybe it took some time to figure out what to do."

She was, Kai realized, trying to make him feel better. His face had started to show his distress somewhere in the middle of his thoughts and here was Sissy, like always, trying to make her psychopathic twin feel something that wasn't there.

But it was there now and his heart a thousand times more than it ever had before. Kai gritted his teeth. Somewhere in there, Luke was laughing at him. Little fucker won in the end after all.

"Maybe," Liv finally allowed, still sounding doubtful. "I hadn't thought of that. I'll use it next time I have to convince Matty and Ty there's nothing to worry about."

"Happy to help," Josette said with a smile. "Ric's pretty worried, too. Keeps blaming himself for not helping Damon save her when he could."

Kai threw his hands in the air. "Yes, we're all very worried. But Bonnie's plucky, right, she knows the spell, she's got the Ascendant, everything's cool. She'll be back. And then she'll kill me. So we have that to look forward to."

"You'll be fine," Liv said dismissively. "Bonnie's a sucker for a good redemption story." She seemed to realize what she'd said, and then she was a whirl of movement. "Well, I've got to go. You know, work and stuff, plus I promised to meet up with Tyler. Thank you for lunch, Jo. Kai."

And then she was gone, racing out the door before her elder siblings could blink.

Kai stared at her empty chair. "It's like teleportation, but really awkward."

Josette huffed a single chuckle then began gathering up her phone and keys, stuffing them into her purse. Kai faced her fully. "You're going, too?"

"Some of us have jobs, Malachai," she replied patronizingly. She stood, slinging her purse up onto her shoulder, but remained there, looking down at him. She was so beautiful, his sister. He'd forgotten that. But she was a stranger now, so much older and more mature and no longer afraid. They weren't even really twins anymore, and the realization almost made him sad.

"I carved out your spleen," he said, and Jo stopped breathing. But he had to know. "And you helped Dad toss me into a prison world to rot alone for all eternity. Why are you-?" And then he gestured around the Grille making what he was sure was the dumbest expression.

Josette barely refrained from rolling her eyes. "You hardly ever give me a choice on accepting your company, Kai."

He just continued to stare at her and she sighed, raking a hand through his hair. "You know, I remember you before you figured out what was happening to you shouldn't be happening. When you were still – not happy, you were never happy - but basically okay? I missed you for so much longer than eighteen years, big brother."

Then she drew her hand away and stepped out from between the chairs, beginning to head for the exit. She only got two tables down before she turned again. Kai, still a little dazed, took a while to catch up to what she was saying.

"You know, you could go check on her." At Kai's nonplussed look, Jo shrugged and made one of the same gestures Liv had made during her story, one where she really was making a point. "Bonnie. You could do the spell you did before. You could even go back and check on her. The first rule of having emotions is not to torture yourself with them, Kai." And, looking satisfied, she left.

With the check. That bitch.

* * *

Bonnie stared at the unmoving drop of blood with disbelief.

"Are you sure you're still a witch?" Kol asked, his light tone failing to completely disguise the anger boiling underneath.

Bonnie would reply – knew she should reply, before he truly lost his temper – but something cold and dark had swallowed up all her words. She pressed down harder on the edges of the map, flattening the curled paper to the dark cherry wood until her fingers went white, her body nearly bent in half over the table, but still the blood did not move.

"Bonnie, what's happened? Or, rather, what's not? Why isn't it moving?"

Kol's voice could barely be heard over the roar rushing through her head. The blood wasn't moving, the spell wasn't working, and she'd never find the Ascendant. She'd be trapped here forever.

How could she have failed? She finally mustered the will to mutter the spell through lips that felt frozen solid, but still nothing happened. The blood was starting to sink into the paper. This was it. This was all she had, it was over.

Bonnie was vaguely aware that she was panicking, that her heart rate and breathing were accelerating far too rapidly, but she couldn't seem to stop. She kept picturing her friend's faces for just a fleeting second before they blurred in her mind's eye, becoming unrecognizable. How long before she forgot the shape of Jeremy's smile or the way Stefan and Damon's brow furrowed exactly the same when they were confused? Before she forgot the smell of her dad's aftershave or the cookies that were the only thing Caroline could bake? So much of Bonnie was made up of her friends, and if they were gone she would be no one.

"Bonnie? Love?"

There was a hand on her arm and Bonnie jerked back so suddenly that she lost her balance and fell, landing hard on her hip then her back. The impact was enough to jar her thoughts free of the spiral they had been caught in, but for a long moment she just lay there, trying to slow her panicked breathing.

She heard Kol sigh heavily, then movement from behind her. His ridiculously shiny black leather shoes came into few and he crouched in front of her.

"You are ridiculous," he informed her bluntly. "And your ancestors are spinning in their graves."

Since most of her ancestors didn't deserve a peaceful eternal slumber, this didn't bother Bonnie too much. Seeing that she had no inclination to move, Kol moved backwards until he was seated, knees drawn up in front of him.

"So you've lost your magic and your mind," he said idly, lacing his fingers together. "Whatever am I going to do with you?"

Breathing somewhat slower than marathon running but way faster than climbing the stairs, Bonnie rolled onto her back and stared up at the ceiling.

"This is kinda nice," she croaked, willing her body to relax muscle by muscle.

Kol hummed. "The rug? It's French."

 _Breaking down,_ Bonnie wanted to reply. She didn't do it very often; panicking and crying didn't do a whole lot of good when all your friends were depending on you. But as the turmoil slowly drained out of her she felt more at peace than she had in a long time. Since before she died the first time.

Well. That was not entirely true. There had been a moment, sitting in that garage with the Camaro running, the carbon monoxide making everything heavy, where Bonnie had actually been grateful to be going. She had felt so solid, leaning against the car and listening to her breathing. Like she was going to sink right through the concrete and the earth and rest forever.

"You tried killing yourself yet?" she asked, craning her head slightly to look at Kol. He was gazing at where her hand rest against her stomach, the blood still slowly leaking from where she had cut her palm for the locator spell.

Bonnie clenched her fist and his stare trailed sideways to her face, leaving an almost physical burn in their wake.

His eyes only met hers for a brief moment before he dropped his head, unlaced his fingers and waved one in the general area behind him. "The furniture in the kitchen is made of White Oak."

All the breath left her at once and she stared up at him, her gaze somewhere between horror and amazement. Kol, who had been so afraid to die. He caught her expression and his face twisted, caught between a smirk and a grimace.

"I tried regular stakes at first. Stupid, but I just wanted to block it all out for a while, yeah?" He laughed at himself and it was horrible to her ears. "Then I went and found one of Nik's dagger and I-"

He stopped, running his hands through his hair over and over and staring hard at his knees. She could see the muscles moving in his jaws and cheeks, the flare of his nostrils. She waited.

"Can you believe," he started again, voice a little cracked. "Can you believe, I actually woke up? Dagger in chest and all. So it was the chair and tables then. Break off the legs, instant stake. We'd known about them the whole time, and I'd told Nik we should burn them, burn the whole house down but he'd always said no. I should've known then what he was about, should've known centuries before, but he was my brother."

"You were here with Klaus? In 1821?" Bonnie asked.

Kol's eyes were so dark they were nearly black. "For a short while."

It was silent then, the both of them listening to Bonnie's slowing breathing and the tiny crackles of the flames. Klaus and Kol together in 1821 with a ready supply of daggers – it didn't take a genius to figure out what had happened to the younger brother.

"The spell's not working, Kol," she said at last. Kol rolled his eyes.

"Seems to be happening to you a lot, little witch. Oh, I'll have to change your pet name now. The troubles you put me through." He clucked his tongue reprovingly and then he was a blur. The next breath Bonnie was sitting upright on the table and Kol was alarmingly close.

Her poor heart stuttered and fired up again, beating hard against her ribs. She flicked her hand out, a weak _motus_ that only sent him stumbling a few feet back, laughing when he regained his footing and hands raised innocently.

"Just trying to help, darling."

"This isn't funny, Kol!"

"Well, we can't all flop about like a fish out of water," Kol shot back, a bite under his laughing tone. "I'll stick to more useful pursuits, thanks."

Bonnie sneered, her pride stung at his jab. "Like what?"

"New Orleans is one of the great centers of magic, Bonnie," Kol explained in an overly-patient tone. Bonnie's peace from before, already waning from Kol's tale of suicide, evaporated completely. "There are hundreds of grimoires and thousands of magic books. There must be something helpful in one of them."

Bonnie's hands were already starting to itch at the prospect of getting her hands on other covens' grimoires, but just to be contrary she asked, "And if there's not?"

Kol's look was something between pity and disdain. "If there's not then I suppose you'll cry and moan about it until I start missing the silence and break your neck. Gods above, woman, are you always this pessimistic?"

This conversation seemed vaguely familiar to Bonnie and with an unpleasant start she realized that she had, somewhere along the way, morphed in Damon at his absolute mopiest. Wasn't she just berating herself earlier today to not give into despair? And now look at her.

Her Grams told her to stay strong. She didn't come all this way to get knocked down by a backfiring locator spell. Magic always had a loophole, that was a certainty, and certainties always made Bonnie feel better. It was dangerous to live in a world of black and white but it was how she survived.

But you couldn't have one without the other and she couldn't do this without Kol. "Okay," she said, waving a hand as if to clear the air between them. "We'll go look. We'll find something."

"And then we'll get out," Kol finished.

Bonnie nodded. "And then we'll get out. We'll go home."

This made Kol shrug. "My home burned down a millennium ago. Just getting out is enough for me." She raised an eyebrow at him, _look whose pessimistic now,_ and he smiled overly-huge and waved his hands in an arc. "But you go ahead and dream big, Bon-Bon."

The tiny smile she had felt quirking at the edges of her lips dropped away. "Don't call me that." Then she hopped off the table and headed for the exit. She didn't hear footsteps following and turned. Kol was still rooted to the spot. "You really wanna be here any longer than we have to be? Let's go."

A flash of uneasiness and something almost like fear crossed Kol's face and then it was gone. "C'mon, love, it's pitch dark out and we've no carriage or horses to pull it."

"Is the big bad Original afraid of the dark?" Bonnie couldn't resist teasing. Kol grimaced but still did not move.

"You need rest. World hopping must be exhausting. We'll set off in the morning, yeah?"

She _was_ tired, though she was loathe to admit it to Kol. "Fine. Is there any room in this place with furniture still intact?"

Kol grinned at her acquiescence and clapped his hands together loudly. Bonnie could not completely cover her startled jump at the loud noise and his grin grew louder.

"Take your pick, little witch. You've the Rose Room, the Wisteria Suite, or the Oleander Apartment."

"I'll take the one _not_ named after a poison, thanks."

The Rose Room was predictably pink and red but Bonnie didn't really care when she saw the large four poster bed. Thankfully Kol did not even spare a goodnight, just a jaunty salute, before pushing her in and closing the door. She didn't know where he went then – _maybe the Belladonna Boudoir,_ she thought tartly – nor did she wonder very long as she fell onto the covers and into a deep and mercifully dreamless sleep.


	3. Listen Carefully to the Sounds

So, all the fic has made me realize is that Bonnie, like Stefan, is a fantastic straightman. If those two ever got scenes together again it would just be a complete dead-pan fiesta. Which I am totally game for.

Thank you for all the reviews, they mean a lot to me. They really do, considering how much I'm probably butchering the show's continuity and lore (but let's be real here, y'all, I can't actually mess it up more than Plec has.)

This chapter is incredibly long and I'll admit, a bit overwrought, but I couldn't quite figure out what to cut out so you'll have to bear with me, I guess.

And finally, a little something extra. I thought up this fanfiction because A) I miss Kol and B) I was listening to Night Riots' 'Contagious' nearly nonstop after the finale because it is my Bonkai anthem but also fits Kol like really well? So I would suggest giving that a listen, but for this chapter, the songs that inspired it the most were "Dreams" by Bastille ft. Gabrielle Aplin and "Family" by Noah Gundersen, which you all will know as the song that played when Elena burned Jeremy's body along with the Gilbert house. They're beautiful songs, so give them a try!

* * *

Chapter 3: Listen Carefully to the Sounds of Your Loneliness

* * *

" _I wonder if you know I'm dreaming about you," Bonnie said, running her hands along the clothed edges of the hangers. Of all the places in the Salvatore boarding house, this walk-in closet was her favorite. It was cozy and dark and she felt safe in here. Wide open spaces freaked Bonnie out._

 _No, that wasn't it. Empty spaces freaked Bonnie out._

 _One time Damon had found her actually sleeping in this closet, wrapped tight under a mile of blankets. She expected him to laugh at her, and he did, but the next night he drug a twin frame and mattress into her room and shoved it into the corner closest to her own bed and fell asleep on it without a word. Bonnie slept in her own bed from then on out and it didn't take Damon quite so much alcohol to go to sleep after that. They never spoke about it, never even said 'goodnight' when darkness fell, but he never left and she never asked him to._

 _There was a chuckle from the room outside. "Wherever I am, I'm flattered but not surprised."_

 _Bonnie smirked, finally chose two variations of the same plaid shirt, and walked out of the closet. She held one up to her chest and then the other. "What do you think?"_

" _I think Eddie Vedder would be proud," Damon said snarkily, then gestured at the more blue one with his glass of orange juice._

 _Bonnie chose the other one just to laugh when he rolled his eyes and began buttoning it over her tank top. The last button done, she sighed and went to sit next to Damon on the bed. "I wish this was real. Not the shirt, obviously, the shirt is hideous. When I get back I'm going to find this shirt and burn it to ash. But this. You. I wish it was real."_

" _When you get back," Damon repeated dully, staring at his glass._

 _She wondered if his defeated expression was just a manifestation of her own fears. She bumped shoulders with him, trying to cheer him – herself? – up a little. "Do you doubt my witchy badass-ness?"_

 _Damon took a long time to respond, and as she waited with a fading smile for him to reassure her, something began prickling along the back of her neck, up into the branches of nerves in her mind. She had the irrational urge to look over her shoulder, but there was no one in this world but her and Damon._

 _Well, and Kai._

 _As if on cue, Damon turned to face her, eyes burning brighter than flames. "Someone's close."_

Bonnie sprung upward, one hand flung out and a _vatos_ on her lips. The lamp on the table next to the rose-red couch exploded along with all the panes of glass in the window it was placed under, but Kol, who had been seated there, was already across the room before the first broken bits of glass hit the floor.

"What's this? _Vatos_ first, _motus_ later?" He asked, laughing at her. "Quite the violent little thing you've turned into, witch."

Bonnie dropped her hand and shrank back to the headboard, tucking the covers under her arms and staring at Kol with wide eyes. "How long have you been there?"

"Awhile. You talk in your sleep, by the way. It'd be almost adorable if it wasn't about _Damon Salvatore."_ Kol made a reproving noise, shaking his head at her. "Aren't there rules about that in girl world? First commandment of the Holy Bible of Girly: thou shalt not covet the best friend's man."

"Why?" Bonnie demanded, completely ignoring the last bit of his tangent. If Damon and Kai had taught her anything, it was not to rise to the bait.

Kol shrugged, looking nonplussed. "Because teenage girls are more territorial than hippopotami?"

"No-"

"Well, yes."

" _No, Kol_ , why were you watching me?" Bonnie finally got out.

The light in Kol's eyes disappeared and he fiddled with the clothes she had just noticed were in his arms. "I wanted," he said softly, "to make sure you were real."

His words were like a knife in her chest. An old wound to whose ache she had grown far too accustomed. She never thought she'd have something in common with Kol Mikaelson, but she'd never thought she die twice either. Life was strange, and hers was even stranger.

The room had turned heavy with their silence and Bonnie cleared her throat, casting about for something to say to break it up. "Wait," she said, quirking an eyebrow. "Did you just compare my gender to hippos?"

Kol grinned widely, relief flashing fast in his eyes at her deflection. "No, darling, I said you were worse than a hippo."

Bonnie scoffed and rolled her eyes obligingly. Kol's grin grew unbearably smug and he stepped forward until the tops of his thighs were pressing against the bottom edge of her mattress.

"I brought you clothes," he said, picking each garment up one by one and flinging them up to her. "They belonged to the youngest son – Edgar? Edwin? Er, actually, maybe it was George. – Anyway, he was skinny as a rail so they should be fine."

Bonnie picked up the trousers he had thrown at her. Edgar/Edwin/George had not been a big man but even so, they would have to be tightly belted to fit her frame. "Why do I need to change at all?"

"Because you reek," Kol said matter-of-factedly, still rifling through the clothes hanging on his arm. Bonnie's mouth dropped open, maintaining her offended expression pointedly until he looked up, at which point he sighed dramatically and dropped the clothes. "I don't mean – well, yes, I _do_ mean, you trekked through the mud and god knows what else yesterday – but your clothes are covered in blood, love."

"And it smells bad?" Bonnie asked, caught somewhere between amused and being genuinely offended.

"It smells-" Kol stopped, taking a deep breath in, eyes drifting closed as he did. Bonnie felt herself trying to push even farther back into the headboard as tiny black veins protruded and then receded around his eyelids. Kol was not like his brothers, or even Damon, who screamed _danger!_ through every pore of their beings, but neither was he Caroline or Elena, whose true nature was so good and warm it could be felt through their cold vampiric exterior.

He was not so different from Kai, she realized. Affable and clever when he wanted to be but never kind. Just enough danger to make you curious enough to get close and just enough charm to make you trust him when you got there.

Bonnie had made that mistake once, and gotten a knife to the stomach and nearly half a year of unbreakable loneliness for her folly. She would never be that foolish again.

"It smells potent," Kol said, finally opening his eyes and focusing on her with an intensity that made her spine tingle uncomfortable. "It wouldn't be very nice to tease me, Bonnie."

"Fine," she spat, seizing up the pants and one of the many shirts he had brought in and swinging her legs out from underneath the covers to the side of the bed. "Get out so I can change." Kol looked a little confused at her capitulation for a moment before his customary smirk returned and he gave a sarcastic half-bow before backing out of the room.

Luckily for Bonnie, the pants had a large waist band spanned by two belts with a generous amount of leather to cinch it together. The shirt was heavily starched and scratchy but blessedly clean and she stripped out of her plaid button-up and tank top quickly. There had been a water basin on the table with the lamp that had exploded with it, the water drenching the rose-printed pink rug that match at little too well with the rose-printed white duvet. Bonnie was too proud to go and ask Kol for a new one but not proud enough to not find the cloth that had been draped over the basin where it had been flung by the door and dip it in the water, scrubbing at her arms, chest, neck and face before sliding the white, long-sleeve shirt over her head.

Kol hadn't been wrong; her 1994 clothes were covered in mud and water stains, one whole sleeve drenched in her blood from where she had cut too deep with the knife. She unclipped Kai's pager from one of the belt loops, mourning the loss of the camcorder she had been toting around with her that she had dropped when crossing worlds, then she tossed her dirty clothes into the cold fireplace, muttering an _Incendia_ to set them alight before dragging her boots over and sitting with her back to flames to put them on. First, though, she turned the left one upside down and let the cure fall into her hand.

It weighed practically nothing and looked completely inconspicuous, and it boggled her mind a little to be sitting here with the cure to vampirism, something she and her friends had fought for nearly half a year to obtain, resting in the palm of her hand. She didn't know what she was going to do with, wasn't even sure why she had gone out of her way to get it. Damon, for all that he might secretly be jealous of the seemingly quaint lives humans lived, loved being a vampire, and Caroline had adapted so well to it that Bonnie couldn't imagine her taking it either. Elena had rejected it the first time through, reveling in her new found abilities and immortality, but maybe her opinion had changed.

Maybe she could give it to Stefan, even, let him finally be free of the Ripper curse that plagued him. He'd always been the most human – and the most monstrous – of them all.

Or maybe, Bonnie thought, hunching in on herself, maybe she'd keep it to herself, until the next time she forgot just how monstrous the monsters really were. Until they showed their real faces. Then she'd find Klaus, shove it down his throat, and then stab him in his beating human heart, and listen to them all die with him. She would be selfish and save her friends somehow, and she'd wash the blood off her hands with a smile.

It was a horrible thought, one that almost felt like it didn't belong to her, but it wasn't the first time it had occurred to her, and Bonnie burned with shame and something else. Something strong and red and hot that made her raise her head high and her magic pulse along her skin. _Power._

"Little witch?" Kol called, knocking on the door. Bonnie jumped, fist clenching hard around the cure. "I know eighteenth century fashion is a little overwrought, but's just buckles and buttons, darling."

Bonnie relaxed with an annoyed, overly-loud sigh, shoving the cure deep into the ridiculously large pockets of her trousers along with Kai's pager. She could practically hear the smile in Kol's voice when he spoke next.

"But you know, if you need a hand, mine are _very_ capable. Very quick and nimble and deft."

She rolled her eyes and began tugging on her boots, tucking the pants into them, and tying the laces. "I'm coming out," Bonnie called, standing. "Hands to yourself."

Kol gave her a once-over when she emerged. She noticed his shirt was a deep green and his pants perfectly tailored. He even had on a vest, black and grey, which she would have found hilarious if he didn't pull it off quite so well. He looked dashing and she looked-

"You look like you're playing dress-up in daddy's clothes," Kol said dryly.

Bonnie would've replied – hopefully with something witty and biting though nothing was coming to mind – but she had a sudden flash of her four-year-old self being chased around her house by her father, wearing his favorite sweater and giggling as she stumbled over the hem. She remembered that afterwards, after Dad had finally caught her and swung her up into his arms, she had realized how badly she had stretched it out and cried into his shoulder, apologizing over and over. But her father put it on then and there, dabbed her tears with his sleeve, and wore it when he took her out for ice cream and even after that until it startled unraveling at the hem. And they shared a smile every time.

Bonnie lowered her head and bit the inside of her cheek, consciously pulling each breath in and pushing the next out until the burning behind her eyes receded. She would not cry in front of Kol Mikaelson.

"We'll get something to eat in town," Kol said, unaware of her turmoil. "The stocks at the grocers get refilled every day, strangest thing, but I guess they wouldn't want you to get out of eternal torment through something so mundane as starvation."

He led her through the endless maze of halls she had only barely paid attention to last night and down the stairs to the foyer which was predictably destroyed. She almost thought of teasing him for it but held her tongue, remembering the many, many temper tantrums Damon and Kai and even she had thrown over the past year.

Kol picked up a canteen of water he had obviously prepared earlier this morning and the opened the door, stepping aside so she could exit first. The house had a large wrap-around porch she hadn't seen last night that remind her of the large plantation mansions that dotted the outskirts of Mystic Falls, like the Lockwood's, but the pillars and railings were all polished dark stone instead of wide white wood and it was only marginally higher than the ground. When she got off the porch she turned and started walking backwards until she could get a full view of the house, tilting her head.

It reminded her a bit of one of those ancient cathedrals, or the castle in _Beauty and the Beast_ and she marveled at it not sinking into the wet earth. Kol watched her appraise it for several long moments before coming to stand beside her.

He looked at her, then to the manor, then back at her, then at last at the house, cocking his head at the exact same angle she had hers. "It belonged to the Beauchantés. They always were a bit odd. A bit…hm, how to put it? A bit…Addams Family?"

Bonnie nodded to show she understood the reference and he continued. "I do like that show, it's amazing how much I missed trapped in a box for ninety years. Well, it _would_ be amazing if I hadn't already been through it. _Twice."_ His tone was, as always, light and joking but the seething undertone was unmistakable and Bonnie shivered at that kind of anger being so close to her. Kol didn't notice. "They were lovely, regardless of their oddities. Held the grandest masquerades. Bekah would've loved them."

Even Bonnie knew Rebekah was his favorite sibling. "Hard to believe she'd miss out on something like that."

"Oh, she was daggered," Kol said, waving at hand dismissively but voice deceptively tight. "You know, Nik and his moods."

Personally, no, she didn't know; Klaus was a spoiled and spiteful little boy housed inside the most powerful and resilient body in the world that was indulged and enabled at every turn by a brother who should be smarter than that. He didn't have moods, he was just a super-powerful asshole. But saying this out loud to Kol would probably not be helpful – Mikaelson Family loyalty tended to emerge at the most inconvenient of times.

"So," Kol said, clapping his hands. Bonnie sincerely hoped that was not a habit of his; any more jumpstarts and her heart would just give up and quit. "Speed or scenic?"

Bonnie furrowed her brow, trying to puzzle out what that meant. Kol gestured at the path they were on and she got it. "Oh, right. Scenic, please. Vamp speed makes me want to hurl."

Kol made a face. "Thank you for sharing, darling. Shall we, then?"

Bonnie started trudging down the long road leading away from the estate and to the main thoroughfare. "You sure we couldn't just use a carriage? You could pull it, you're strong enough."

"The irony of an African-American asking another to pull them along in a cart like he was some beast of burden is not lost on me, I assure you."

"Wow. That was really low. I'll just walk on this side and feel awful about my entire existence."

* * *

Let it never be said that Kai Parker was a coward, but –

Kai Parker was a coward.

He _could_ use the remains of the Ascendant to go check on Bonnie, make sure she was alright and on the right path and coming home. He even could send himself back physically and drag her back himself, if he was so inclined.

Or, he could sit on his couch and catch up on all the episodes of _X-Files_ that he'd missed.

Kai sunk even deeper into the cushions and shoved another handful of pork rinds into his mouth, grimacing as he chewed. God, he hated this brand. He'd been so excited the first time he'd gone into the Mystical Falls supermarket to get some cause the ones he'd gotten there in 1994 tasted even better than the type he used to stock up on in Portland, but they hadn't been there. Just this generic, off-brand crap that tasted like sandpaper. He'd even gone to bug Damon about where the 1994 brand could be and been told _they probably just stopped carrying them, now get out of my living room, you freak._

And what the hell, were Mulder and Scully actually going to hook up? He watched the _X-Files_ for aliens and monsters and overly-complicated deaths, not for almost kisses and unspoken declarations of love. On screen, the two main character's faces got so close they were practically touching, their eyes heated and their voices mere whispers.

"Boo!" Kai shouted, and threw a pork rind at the screen before turning the whole thing off. He immediately regretted it, because once the silence set in, all he could think about was Jo's words.

Thing was, he didn't want to see Bonnie. Besides the fact that she would try to kill him on sight, which trying to stop would take an effort Kai wasn't really looking forward to committing, and besides the fact that she had put an ax into his chest when he'd been nothing but helpful, the last time he saw her she was walking into the Salvatore's garage to turn the car on with the doors closed and die of carbon monoxide poisoning.

He'd never seen her cry like that. He'd shot her with a crossbow, he'd drugged her, terrorized her, stabbed her with a knife, and he'd never seen her cry like that. He'd never seen anyone look as destroyed as Bonnie Bennett had at that moment, and he'd done that to her.

There was a low swoop of now-familiar guilt in his stomach and he kicked at the coffee table in front of him. "Shut up, Luke," he muttered. But it wasn't Luke anymore. He'd never say it out loud – he was saving it up for when Liv got mouthy and really pissed him off and he needed to shut her down, because that was an inevitability – but there was no Luke. A merge was a _merge,_ not like some weird nineties co-parenting of the psyche bullshit.

Just pieces of his little brother, seeping into his own sub-conscious. The first couple of days after the merge it had been louder, more obvious, like there were foreign objects stuck into his brain – a feeling that Kai actually knew pretty well with the numerous and inventive ways he had tried to kill himself over the years. He had even cried when writing Josette a letter apologizing for all he'd done. But now Luke's pieces were part of Kai's puzzle. They belonged to him.

It was odd, because if what he felt now was hell, and it was, he knew he was still waiting for the worst of it.

He'd never liked his siblings, but they were his little brothers and sister. He'd helped change their diapers, he'd sung them to sleep with Josette, he'd helped them fix their skateboards, played soccer with them, and even let Annabeth rope him into a few tea parties. And he'd murdered them like it was nothing because it was nothing.

Jonah was the eldest after himself and Jo. Seventeen and thin. Bit of a dork, really, had one of those ancient IBM computers that he was constantly fiddling with. Kai had wrapped the power cord around his neck and hung him off bannister.

Then there was Annabeth, blonder and prettier than Caroline Forbes could ever hope to be. She was fourteen and better at cloaking spells than even Kai was when he could manage to steal a little magic. Annie played a good game of hide and seek that night but she had always been shit at dodgeball so it was no real surprise she couldn't avoid his hunting knife.

Theo was his least favorite brother, and that was saying something, because Luke _never stopped screaming_ as a baby. Theo was the golden boy, good at everything, and he was only eleven. His father liked to lament about what a shame it was that Theo wasn't a twin. Theo was the smartest, had the strongest magic, but he also was the bravest and that had been his downfall. He'd tried to protect Annie, so Kai sucked him dry, beat him to death with a baseball bat, then hung him beside their brother.

He'd lied when he told Bonnie and Damon he saved Zachariah for last. Zach was eight and was the cleverest little shit that'd ever been. He was just so _sneaky_ , always playing practical jokes on his siblings and parents. Never Kai, Zach was terrified of Kai and was the first to hide on May 9, 1994 when he saw his eldest brother prowling the upper halls. Zachariah died last because Kai couldn't find him, and probably wouldn't have if half-dead Annie, the dumb cow, hadn't called out to Zach from where he was peeking out from his hiding spot in the cupboard under the downstairs bathroom sink.

He could remember, with perfect detail, Jonah's face when the cord wrapped around his neck, Theo's face when the bat came down, Annabeth's face when the knife went in, Zach's face under the water, but for a long time it had been like watching a movie of someone else's really bloody life. It wasn't his hand that did all those things. It happened a long time ago, to someone else.

There was a complete disconnect in his mind between Jonah's favorite lullaby and the angle of Jonah's broken neck, but this missing piece would fall into place, too. And Kai knew it, could feel it lurking on the edges of his mind, and hated it. Hated himself. Hated hating himself and was sick of the whole goddamn thing. He had half a mind to bore out his brain with a hand-drill just to see if he could get all this emotion crap out, if only Jo hadn't murder-proofed his apartment after one particularly bad mood swing.

" _I don't understand," he said dumbly, staring at the floor._

 _Josette looked hopelessly lost. "Kai, I'm…she was always frail, and after you murdered half her children…"_

 _Kai let out a bark of laughter. "Yeah, let's blame on me, not on the man who kept making her have children into her forties."_

" _She had a choice and she-"_

" _Had a choice?" Kai yelled, rising from the couch and looming over his twin, glad to feel the thrill of excitement when she cringed back into the cushions was still there, if muted. "You think any of us had a choice when it came to what he wanted?"_

 _His mother was dead. He should've guessed it, when Luke and Liv and Jo could only talk about Joshua Parker, but he'd hoped she'd finally wised up and left the abusive son of a bitch. But she had lived out the rest of her days at his side and died and Kai had missed it, locked away in some prison world._

 _He hated her so much. She hadn't even had the guts to participate in the spell that sent him away. She'd abandoned him to her father, just like she'd always done. He didn't even get the chance to tell her how much he hated her, he never got to see her one last time._

" _Kai?" Jo had straightened, one hand reaching forward. "Kai, please calm down. I didn't know this would upset you so much."_

 _Kai started laughing. She sounded like she used to about twenty four years ago, watching him with palms out while he stalked from one wall of his room to the other after something had set him off. Baby Theo had filled his Nintendo with jam, or Jonah had mastered some spell Kai couldn't, or Annabeth had run off crying to Daddy after big brother accidentally zapped some of her magic and Kai got ten lashes._

 _She looked exactly the same now, and Kai laughed harder. There was salt water in his mouth, coming from tracks of water scalding a path down his face from his eyes. He wiped at his face furiously, laughter dying completely as he stared at his slick fingers._

" _Kai-"_

" _Where is she?" Kai interrupted harshly, rubbing his fingers together._

" _In Portland. With the others."_

 _Kai blinked and a fresh rush of wetness fell. He hated this, every single moment of this. He couldn't even think straight. He shoved the heels of his palms into his eyes and let out a roar of frustration. "How do you do this?"_

 _Jo stood up, not touching him but ghosting her hands over the outline of his shoulders. "I just do. A lifetime of practice."_

" _No," Kai snarled. "This is exhausting, it's useless, and I can't – can't breathe around it. It takes up too much room. How do any of you people survive?"_

 _Jo's look was unsympathetic and grim. "Life sucks, Kai, and then you die."_

" _I've done the first part," Kai said. He held out a hand and the glass of wine he had tactlessly given his pregnant sister flew into his hand and shattered, leaving only the sharp pointy stem. "Maybe I should work on that last bit."_

 _He wasn't really going to kill himself. Well, probably not. Kai was a big fan of himself and his ongoing existence. But at that moment, stabbing until he found his tear ducts and ripping them out sounded like an A-plus plan. He was gonna let the Luke drain out of him and then he'd be better._

" _Malachai Parker!" Jo snapped, seizing his hand in both of hers. "You will do no such thing. You do that and our entire family dies. Bonnie dies," she added when the first part didn't seem to affect him. "And Dad wins. You're telling me you stabbed and clawed your way out of the prison world to give up now?_

" _I'm sorry. Do you know how much I loathe saying that to you, how little you deserve it? But I am sorry that Mom is gone. That she's gone and Dad is still here."_

 _Kai nodded, temporary insanity lifting. He pushed the glass stem into his sister's hands and sat down, wiping away the last of his tears. Jo leaned down to place the stem on the table, thought better of it, and went to the window to throw it out to the alley below._

 _When she came back she had her coat over one arm and he hadn't moved an inch. She sat beside him with a sigh. "I see you've inherited Luke's flair for the dramatic."_

" _Please, that's all me." Kai felt bone tired now. "Sissy?"_

" _Yes?"_

" _Our mother died."_

 _Another deep sigh, one he felt in his own lungs. "I know."_

" _I hated her." Josette could always tell a lie from the truth._

 _A hand on his shoulder. "Sweetheart, she hated you, too."_

He had told her she didn't have to worry. "I was just trying to psych you out, Josie," he had told her as she wandered around replacing all his silverware with plastic forks and spoons the next day and ransacking his bathroom for painkillers. "I'd never kill myself. I'm too pretty to die."

"You're an awful liar, big brother," she had shot back. "Always have been, 'cause you didn't know how. Why would you? You never lied! Every batshit insane thing you ever said, you meant it. 'I'm gonna murder my whole family!' 'Oh, that Kai he's such a kidder!' _No."_

"That…was that supposed to be me, that first voice there?"

Jo had rounded on him, fire in her eyes. Somehow losing her magic had made his sister ten times scarier. Or maybe it was the baby crazy getting a head start. "Shut up. I have a good life and I am happy and you have done enough to me, do you understand?"

Kai nodded mutely and let her do her job without another word. And now, here he was a week later, staring at his black TV screen, surrounded by cheap pork rinds, and kind of glad she did. Cause right about now those steak knives would've looked really appealing.

He had to do something about this before seriously lost his mind. This guilt thing that was eating him up – maybe Josette was right. He couldn't let his emotions torture him. Kai had always been the proactive type and there was only one solution.

"Bonnie," he whispered. Just the name made his whole stomach clench painfully. Or, wait, no, that was something else entirely. Kai felt his whole stomach lurch and was off the couch in an instant.

Three minutes later he was still hovering over the toilet, puking up twelve hours' worth of shitty pork rinds. He rested his sweaty forehead on the toilet, texted Liv to tell her he was dying and could she please bring some him soup, and thought about who to take with him to retrieve Bonnie Bennett from his prison world.

If he was going to be a good person he was damn sure going to have an audience.

* * *

"Kol," Bonnie said, whole sentences forming in her mind to describe what she was seeing. But all that came out was his name again.

"Right here, love," the Original pointed out. "And yes, I see it."

Bonnie had _never_ been to New Orleans, but even if she had, before or after Hurricane Katrina, she doubted it would've looked like this. Red brick and stone buildings rose high on either side of the abandoned street she and Kol had followed into town, the dirt road soon giving way to brick. It was all classic Southern architecture, the history so rich she could feel it even in a ghost town like this.

She was bouncing on the balls of her feet before she could quite calm herself down but the pensive look on her companion's face sobered her. Of course Kol had seen this a thousand times by now. He had seen it full of life. And for what she guessed was quite a long stretch of time, it was the last thing he saw before his brother slid a dagger into his heart. She didn't quite feel sorry for him – no doubt the streets of New Orleans were much safer with Kol neutralized – but she could understand. Once upon a time that she could even do that would've appalled her, but since meeting Kai she'd developed a keen appreciation for the wonders of empathy.

"So, where to?" she asked. Kol broke free from whatever vision he was seeing and glanced at her before leading her to the first crossroads and stopping, folding his arms and looking at her determinedly.

"Who performed the spell for your prison world?"

"It wasn't mine."

" _Fine_ ," Kol gritted out. "Damon's prison world. Whose spell was it?"

Bonnie hesitated before answering. "The Gemini Coven."

Kol looked surprised at that, letting out a low whistle. "Damon Salvatore has made the most interesting enemies."

"How do you mean?" Bonnie asked. Lending a largely non-magical life, she was still pretty in the dark about the other magical clans around the globe. Besides, the Bennetts were clearly the most powerful, so she thought the others weren't worth much thought. Now she was a little embarrassed with herself.

It was a feeling Kol apparently shared. "Oh, only that the Gemini Coven is the one of the oldest and most powerful families in the history of the entire world. They've existed as long as the Travelers, they predate mine. That some insignificant gnat like Damon did enough to get their attention and hold it long enough to curse him to an eventual prison world – that's a gutsy gnat."

"Damon Salvatore in four words," Bonnie muttered under her breath. Kol caught it and grinned for a moment before growing serious again.

"This is voodoo territory, Bonnie. Sacrificial, ancestral magic. I'm talking slaughtering babies in the middle of pentagram. Stuff the Geminis wouldn't touch with a ten-foot pole."

Bonnie choked on a hysterical giggle, thinking _wait until you meet Kai,_ but then what Kol was saying slowly seeped into her brain. "So what you're saying is: there's no Gemini books here that could help us."

"It's not impossible, but it's doubtful. Covens tend to respect each other's boundaries," Kol said, before smirking at her. "Well, except for the Bennetts. You'll find evidence of their sticky fingers in every pot."

Bonnie resisted the urge to wave her squeaky-clean fingers in his face, knowing he had a point. "My blood was a part of the spell to activate the Ascendant in 1994-"

"What?"

"My world," Bonnie said, then shook her head. "The prison world. It was in 1994."

Kol looked horrified. "You poor thing. I missed the nineties but the whole thing looked dreadful." His look turned considerate. "So why was that Damon's hell?"

 _It wasn't,_ she thought grimly. Even when Damon was telling his story, his face grim and sad and his voice all hoarse, she hadn't really believed May 10, 1994 had been the worst day of his life. Damon had three lifetimes of bad things and she could name ten moments off the top of her head in just the time she'd known him that would easily top murdering a pregnant woman he cared nothing for.

It hadn't even really been Kai's hell. It just happened to be the day he got thrown into the prison world because it was the day of an eclipse. It wasn't made for him, and it wasn't tailored to torture him in any specific way. It was just what it said it was – a prison.

But Kol's world…it was different. Kol had died nearly two years ago, so if the world had been created at the time of his death, or for him while he was waiting on the Other Side, it would look like 2011, and they would be in Mystic Falls. The spells were different. The one used on Kai could not be the same as the one used on Kol.

"Also," Kol said, when it became clear she wasn't answering him. "I've never met a single member of the Gemini Coven in my life. Why would they curse me?"

"Favor for a friend?" Bonnie suggested absently, still trying to puzzle it out.

Kol snorted. "Unlikely. Witches love me."

 _That_ got her attention. She stared up at him, one eyebrow raised incredulously. Kol saw her expression and grinned, raising his hands innocently. "It's true. In 1901 I even led a whole group of New Orleans witches against my brother. We failed, obviously." The last part was directed at his feet, but Kol soon looked up again, meeting her eyes. "But I respected them and they knew that. I've always held witches in high regard; my mother was a witch and the most wonderful woman I knew – before she lost her mind and tried to kill me. I knew several of your ancestors as well, all powerful, accomplished women whom I deeply admired."

Bonnie felt a little taken aback and knew her mouth was hanging open but was a bit too gobsmacked by the stark honesty in his voice to think to close it. Kol gestured at her. "And then there's you, little witch. You're okay."

Her hand flung out and whacked him on the chest before she could stop herself, a laugh bursting from her. " _Okay?!_ "

"You've yet to kill me," Kol pointed out. "So, that's a plus. But you hit like a drunken toddler. That's a minus. But I an being serious, Bonnie, when I say that I cannot think of why a witch would do this to me."

"I cannot seriously have to explain the ripple effect to you, Kol," Bonnie said. "So you respect witches. But what about their families? You've killed thousands of people, and you think not a one of them was the brother, sister, parent or spouse of a witch? All it takes is one distraught coven leader and you've got yourself a prison world."

 _But he would've been thrown into it right away if it was the Geminis,_ she reasoned. _The spell wouldn't have waited until he died…because it's not a spell._

"It's a curse," she said out loud. Kol cocked his head to the side and she explained. "The prison world was waiting for you when the Other Side collapsed, yes? And the Other Side was its own sort of prison world. It was waiting for you, Kol, it wasn't a spell. It was a curse. A lot of witches use the terms interchangeably but-"

"A curse has a trigger," Kol finished for her. "I know my magic. Something has to happen for it to take effect. In this case, I'm assuming, my death. Why do you look so pleased?" he asked, because she was grinning.

"That's not how the Gemini spell works at all. This is different. Which means there are different loopholes, different ways to escape. It isn't hopeless."

"Darling, it never is," Kol said with a sigh. "So I've been cursed. Well, the best coven to go to for a curse was the Algiers. I must warn you, their magic is quite…black. You should be fine, just pay attention." He turned his head towards the sun, high and just to the left, reorienting his body to face north, then looked down at her. "How would you like to see a steamboat?"

Kol did not meander from his path and Bonnie wasn't quite comfortable asking him questions, but luckily he loved the sound of his own voice and cheerfully told her stories about many of the places they passed. More than one story ended with "and then we killed them all," which he thankfully started omitting as the distance she put between them grew over five feet. He never mentioned Elijah or Klaus by name but sometimes he would go very quiet after a particularly jovial story.

He hadn't seen Rebekah in a year, hadn't seen Klaus or Elijah in nearly two. She wondered if he'd been able to hear Klaus' screams of grief when they sealed him up in the Gilbert house for three days with his little brother's charred body from the Other Side. Bonnie didn't have siblings, unless she counted Elena and Caroline, which she did. But she knew that Elena losing her had not destroyed her best friend the way losing Jeremy had. She knew that Damon could survive losing Elena, and had survived losing Alaric, but would walk into the sun the instant Stefan was gone from the world, and vice versa. Sometimes she remembered Klaus screaming and she was very thankful she was an only child. Sometimes she remembered and was so jealous she couldn't stand it. No one would ever mourn her like that.

The smells changed, the tinny but clean smell of freshwater filling the air. "The West Bank," Kol announced. She could see the large stack of a steamboat in the distance but before she could take one step closer Kol veered sharply to the left, down a dark side alley.

The entrance to the Algiers' stronghold of course required magic, which Bonnie took a good hour trying to figure out until she finally pulled a Gandalf and got Kol to translate the French written all around the door jamb.

"Ahem: Friend or foe, we will all burn the same. Or thereabouts, my French is absolute shite."

At which point she cast a fire spell to no effect. Noting the dark smears on the door, she pulled Jo's hunting knife from her boot, made a generous cut on her arm that even made Kol wince, smeared it across the door and then set it to boiling. When the blood had burned away, the lock clicked open.

"These people are hardcore," Bonnie muttered, set her skin to knit back together with a wave of her hand, and pushed forward into the dark beyond.

The candles lit themselves as they passed, which was an admittedly neat little trick that Kol ruined by, annoyingly, oh-ing and ah-ing at every burst of flame. The long hallway finally let out into a dimly-lit, very high ceilinged great room edged with shelves with no glimpse of the brick wall at all to be seen behind the stacks and stacks of books. There was a great brazier in the middle of the room, placed dead center in a pentagram carved into the floor. Bonnie raised a hand but Kol grabbed it immediately.

"Don't light that," he warned, casting a wary eye about.

"Why not?"

"That brazier is the birthplace of some very dark spells, and one should not go meddling with it unawares. Who knows what lingers within it? Don't touch anything, Bonnie. Just – give me a moment."

And then he was a blur, racing around the room, zig-zagging and jumping high. The first crack of electricity sent Bonnie skittering back to the entrance but Kol just ran a hand through his newly-heightening hair, shook it off, and kept going.

"Why are the wards still active?" she asked after he'd tripped another, a nasty little hex that made him cough up about a gallon of water. If Kol had needed to breathe, he'd be dead.

Kol shrugged, sucking in a huge gasp of unnecessary air. "Did 1994 lose all its magic?"

Bonnie thought of Qetsiyah's blood all over Silas' tomb, thrumming with power, and the duplicate cure resting within. "But that was a carbon copy world."

"So is this," Kol argued, annoyance flashing on his face that she was still pursuing this. "Everything's exactly the same as I remember it, and my memory is flawless." When he saw he had satisfied her, he began running again.

There were more flashes, some of lightning, some fire, some of purple and gold that slowed Kol down the most. But they only went off once, and when he had made a completely unhindered circuit he raced back to her side.

"You may proceed," he announced with a cough. Bonnie nodded, setting off for the nearest bookshelf, then turned.

"Thank you."

Kol just shrugged. "I can't lose you now, little witch. I want my freedom, too." This was completely what Bonnie had expected, and yet it still made something inside of her hurt, something that she had shoved down deep the moment her grandmother died saving Stefan Salvatore. Kol clapped his hands cheerfully, Bonnie's glare only invigorating him. "So, you'll take this side and I, that? Looks like I'm in for a bit of speed-reading. What words am I looking for? Prison world? Ascendant?"

Bonnie just stared at him. "Or we could just…" She held out both hands and thought _curses._ To her dismay every single shelf began shaking all across the room and she dropped the search spell. _Death curses,_ she refined, relieved when only about two hundred books dropped to the floor. Kol, for his part, looked impressed. "Magic. Look for something about curses trapping spirits, activated by death, something like that."

Kol nodded smartly and zipped over, beginning with the largest tome he could find. Bonnie tried a few more search spells. _Alternate dimensions. Containment. Mikaelson._ The seventy or so books that fell from those she added to the piles she was picking up and placing next to Kol. He glared at her every time she walked away.

"I'm helping, I swear," she promised, but when he looked down again, she placed the books down and began seriously examining the room. The Algiers' grimoire had to be here somewhere. She cast out a quick pulse of magic, hoping to hear something respond to her, but all she got was a twitch of Kol's shoulders and an inquisitive glance in her direction. Manual search it was. All the books looked mostly the same, and she couldn't feel the presence of any cloaking spells or misdirection hexes. She could hear Kol turning rapidly through the pages and told herself she'd only look for one more minute before she sat down and started reading.

She crossed over one of the points of the pentagram and every hair on her body rose. She stepped outside the lines and the feeling disappeared, then back inside again. It was like tiny electric charges all across her skin, and the feeling only grew stronger the closer she walked to the brazier, until she was standing over it and could feel it humming in her ears.

The brazier was bronze on the inside, shaped like a giant cup with a hollow stem. The gleam of it was hypnotizing, and she leaned over it to get closer. There was something in the shimmer of it that made her head swim. Her hands gripped the edges to support herself and the buzzing stopped, along with anything else. All she could hear was her heart pounding in her ears.

It was like the harder she looked the more she saw. There was something in the stem, covered by the wood for the fire and ash, resting on one of the grates. Square and small and covered in gears.

 _The ascendant!_ She reached out to move the chops of wood but they wouldn't budge, no matter how she pushed. The mix of potions and whatever else the Algiers had thrown in here had warped them in such a manner that they were melted to the surface of the brazier. Something about it seemed wrong – wood couldn't melt into metal – but she dismissed it, focusing on the problem at hand.

 _Just burn the wood away,_ she thought. _Just light the flame and you can have what you want._

Her blood was so loud in her ears as she raised her hand above the wood and opened her mouth. " _Incen-"_

Suddenly there was a hand over her mouth and she was being dragged forcibly backwards. _Kol._ She threw an aneurysm at him, a _vatos_ for good measure, but he didn't slow until they were over the line of the pentagram, where he dropped his hands only to grab her shoulders, spin her around, and forcefully shove her into a bookshelf.

"What part of ' _don't light it'_ was so difficult for you to grasp?" He snarled at her, canines lengthened and three inches from her face. Bonnie tried for another aneurysm and his hand came up to wrap around her throat.

"The ascendant-" she choked.

"Do you have any idea what you could've unleashed?" Kol roared, seemingly unaware of how tightly he was gripping her. The edges of her vision were starting to go black. He could probably barely feel aneurysm number three.

"Please," Bonnie gasped. "Ascendant…in the bottom."

Kol growled and released her to check. Bonnie sagged against the bookcase and massaged her throat with her hands. Her heart was still all she could hear, and as Kol ran his hands along the edges of the obviously-empty brazier she thought she could pin-point the moment it broke. There wasn't even any ash on his hands when he raised them. It had been a vision. It wasn't real, and she wasn't going home tonight.

"I thought – I saw –" she managed to whisper, the words burning on their way out.

Kol wouldn't even look at her. "You were deceived. It tricked you."

"It's a thing-" she protested, but that only seemed to make him angrier.

"It's _magic_! It is just as alive as you and I and it _wants_. The entirety of Algiers magic starts from this brazier. Do you see that hole in the ceiling?" He pointed upwards to a large circular hole in the ceiling, the edges of it caked in soot. "When I lived here, the entire city would shut down if the people saw smoke rising from this building because we knew that the Algiers were dealing with demons. Spirits older than all my siblings' years put together."

Bonnie looked at the brazier with new found horror. Why couldn't she feel it? Something that old and powerful and she had just walked right into its snare without even a prickle of warning. "I didn't know," she said hoarsely, then glared at Kol. "You didn't tell me. How was I supposed to know these people had the root of all evil hanging out in their basement?"

"I told you their magic was dark. I told you to be vigilant. And you're a Bennett," Kol said as if it was obvious. "You're supposed to be powerful. I thought you would've known. The others had always known."

 _The useless one is here. Thank God. I've watched you try to do magic for months now. What are you gonna do, fail at me? It's embarrassing. I'm embarrassed for you._

Bonnie closed her eyes, forcefully shoving Kai's ghost out of her head, trying to feel for something, anything about the brazier. But there was nothing.

"Just because we're in some alternate hell dimension," Kol said. "Doesn't mean the spirits can't find us."

Bonnie just nodded, sinking down to the floor and picking up one of the books closest to her. "Next time, tell me."

"Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice…I'm no fool, little witch." Kol responded, his voice a sing-song condescension that grated on her thread-bare nerves.

Bonnie, pride brutally stung and battered emotionally and physically, wouldn't have stopped her next words even if she had thought them through. "And how many times did Klaus dagger you again, Kol?" Kol's mouth shut tight with an audible clicked and she grinned sweetly, meanly. "Shame on you."

He turned on his heel without another word and returned to his own pile, flicking through the pages at an even faster rate than before.

They remained that way for hours, Bonnie finding a few interesting leads but nothing truly worthwhile. Kol had two stacks going, the larger one which assumed was useless, and a much smaller one filled with hopefully relevant material. He had just tossed another onto the large pile when the light suddenly dimmed. They both looked up at the now very red noon sky.

Kol was up in an instant. "We need to go back."

"What, why?" Bonnie asked, her voice still not completely returned. Kol grimaced and began looking around until he found what he was searching for: two large satchels, one of which he tossed at Bonnie.

"Put the important ones in there, you can read them at night." When Bonnie didn't move he took a step towards her only to be halted in his tracks by her upraised hand and an immobilizing spell. He rolled his eyes. "I know what you can do, love. I can break this, and we both know it. Now I don't fancy a walk home in the dark, do you? So let's get on the road before we lose the sun."

"There are plenty of hotels in the city, why can't we stay here?"

Kol glowered at her, fighting against the spell. His left arm moved an inch. "Because I hate this city! I don't want to stay here any longer than I have to."

"Neither do I," Bonnie argued. "Which is why it's in our best interest to stay here, keep searching, and find some damn answers so we can go home."

"You think I trust you in any part of this city?" Kol asked incredulously, making a tiny step forward. "After what you pulled today? You'd probably sneak away, fall into a Kindred nest and mix together the precise right ingredients to raise an undead army completely by accident. And I'm not leaving you here; if you found the way out on your own, whose to say you won't just abandon me? Besides, we won't find anything if we're dropping from exhaustion. In fact, we'll probably miss something important."

She knew there was something he wasn't telling her, and she knew she should keep pressuring him, but maintaining the immobilization spell on an Original was draining her already exhausted reserves. Her throat ached fiercely, the edges of the cut on her arm had reopened, and she was still very shaken by what she had almost done today. She dropped her hand.

Kol was next to her the next second, shoving her own small pile into one satchel. He made a move to help her up and she shoved herself away, which actually made him pause in his movements and look at her. She saw his eyes dart down to her throat for the briefest moment and then to her great relief, he moved away, going to fill up his own bag.

They were out of the city before sunset. Bonnie turned to look at it, the sun hitting every piece of glass and lighting up the entire city. She could almost see it as it was supposed to be, alive and vibrant. If she listened hard enough, she could almost make believe the faint strains of a lone piano.

"Little witch."

She turned and followed Kol.


	4. I Didn't Know I Was Broken

Okay, so this chapter took forever to write because I had to go to my best friend's wedding. Sorry for the delay. It was also hella long and so has been split in two, but the other half isn't written. I'm not on my game. But it's here and its written so go me!

The songs used as inspiration for this chapter were _"_ I Wanna Get Better" by Bleachers and "To Hell With You" by Sleigh Bells, which are both very high up on my Most Played list so give them a listen! Alright, no more delays!

* * *

Chapter 4: I Didn't Know I Was Broken 'Til I Wanted To Change

* * *

On the second morning in the Weirdest Place in Space and Time, Bonnie was awakened by fifty books being tossed systematically at her prone body until she awoke.

"Wow," Kol said when she jolted upwards, body clenching in an arc with her now very bruised hip at the apex. "I was on nineteen. You sleep like the dead, little witch."

Without a word, Bonnie swept her arm across the bed and nineteen books went careening into Kol's stupid face.

"Oi, watch it, love! Some of the books are almost as old as me." Even as he was saying it, he spiked an incoming book down hard onto the wooden floor of her room.

Bonnie glared, placing a hand over her hip and setting a light healing spell into the flesh there, then sat up. "What are you doing here? What are those?"

Kol tsked. "Now I know America's education is on the decline but I thought even you would recognize a book."

"I swear to God, Kol-"

"I don't think he listens in on alternate dimensions, sweetheart," Kol said dismissively. He had caught one book in each hand and brought them over to her. "These are the Algiers spellbooks we picked up yesterday. No point in going into town today with all these here."

His grin was reassuring and kind and did not at all fit his face. Of course he wanted to keep her away from whatever made him so nervous at sunset yesterday. Bonnie grabbed one of the proffered books and glared at him. "Can I ask you a question?"

"Of course."

"Is Elijah the only member of your family who isn't completely transparent?"

Kol nodded, not even missing a beat. "He likes to play the hero. That calls for a fair bit of trickery when you're a blood sucking monster. I, myself, take great pride in my own authenticity."

"I'm sure you do," Bonnie muttered. She sighed, placing the book on her bedside table. "I know there's something in New Orleans that freaks you out, Kol, but I don't really feel like walking three miles today to find out what it is. So, fine, we'll stay in. But you're helping."

Kol clapped his hands together and Bonnie daydreamed about magically sealing them together so he would stop doing that. "Excellent. Knew you were a reasonable woman, little witch. I'll just be downstairs then." He paused for a moment, leaning closer and turning his face side to side as if he was searching for something, then drawing back, looking confused and almost disappointed before he shook it off. "We've much to do, so no dallying."

He bounded out before she could respond, leaving behind a bemused Bonnie. She dressed slowly, choosing to shove the pager into the bedside table's drawer but keeping the hunting knife and the cure on her person. She didn't go straight away to the large living area where Kol waited, instead taking a detour towards the kitchen and grabbing one of the apples she had seen there the first night.

Kol had already taken up residence in his great leather chair when she finally made her way around, but she was happy to see that he had found a settee from somewhere in the house and placed it close to the fire roaring in the fireplace. She settled down into the cushions, only at the last moment remembering her manners and mumbling a 'thank you' to Kol that he did not return.

He seemed completely unaffected by what happened yesterday, and while that did bother her, it irritated her more than she wasn't used to this by now. Damon, Klaus, Silas, Kai; they were all fully capable of flipping on a dime, going from scary to overly-polite teddy bear in a moment. The ending was always the same: Bonnie would fall for it and end up with some foreign, pointy object lodged in some incredibly inconvenient location. Fangs in her neck, a knife in her stomach. They used her and then cast her aside like a broken toy.

She still couldn't decide, even after all these years, if she preferred that kind of disingenuousness or if she would rather it be like Elena's method, playing on her loyalties and her sense of righteousness to, using a lifetime of friendship to bend Bonnie to her will. It wasn't Elena's fault; Bonnie could say no anytime she wanted, she just never worked up the strength to. If Bonnie could help people, then she should, no matter what the price – that was her code.

But Elena, and Caro, and Stefan, they knew this about her. And they had raised the price for years until it was more than Bonnie's power could pay. So she auctioned off her life and happiness for her friends, and she didn't regret that. Not even when she was stuck with Kai, not now when all she had was Kol. Bonnie's friends were her family, and she would do anything for them. She just wished they wouldn't ask her to.

"You're not even reading," Kol said dryly, eyes never leaving his book. Bonnie broke from her reverie and huffed, opening the book flat on the velvet cloth of the couch and holding one hand over it, using the search spell to find certain phrases and starting from there. And so she and Kol passed the day away in silence.

* * *

The first person Kai went to was Damon. Bonnie was his best friend, and Kai was sure he'd be eager to jump onboard any plan that might save her. To his surprise and a disconcerting bit of anger, Damon seemed hesitant.

"Now's not a good time, Kai."

Kai just stared, open-mouthed, from his customary place in the dead center of Damon's overstuffed couch while Damon paced back and forth in front of him, drinking a scotch. "What?"

Damon grimaced. "This thing with Caroline-"

"What is wrong with you people?" Kai burst out. "Emotions are difficult, yeah. Losing your mom freaking sucks, sure, I got that memo, too. But I swear, it's like every time one of you gets so much as a hangnail you go for the humanity switch!"

"What affects Caroline affects Stefan affects me, Kai!" Damon nearly shouted. Drinking in Kai's entirely unimpressed face, he tried a calmer approach. "Look, if we can keep her sane for a couple of weeks, if we know we can leave her by herself, then no problem. But I won't leave Stefan and Elena, not even for a second, if I don't know one hundred percent that they're safe. Not again."

"Bonnie should be here by now, Damon," Kai tried to explain, but he was cut off when Damon suddenly hurled the tumbler in his hand at Kai's head. He stopped it half and inch away from his cheekbone and sent it soaring into the fireplace and then Damon's hand was wrapped in the fabric of his coat.

"Bonnie," the vampire snarled. "Should've been here months ago, but some psychotic little freak had to torture her first and then fucking abandon her. What's all this about, Kai, huh? Maybe you just want to go back to finish the job."

Kai rolled his eyes. "Yeah, that's why I'm asking you to go with, so you can see the whole thing and then decapitate me. Assisted suicide, I hear it's all the rage these days. And she didn't give me much of a choice in the whole thing." The last bit tasted sour on his tongue, but it wasn't precisely a lie, or at least he didn't think so. Bonnie was adamant he not get out and he was determined to escape. Immovable object meet unstoppable force.

Damon sneered and released him, drawing up to his full height. "Bonnie always gives a choice." He turned and walked towards the fireplace, placing a hand on the mantle.

Kai smoothed out the wrinkles in his coat. Okay, so maybe the problem wasn't that Bonnie hadn't given him a choice, it was that her options were unacceptable. She wanted to keep him in that hell forever, and she would've left him alone in his half of the world. The thought of going back to a life of solitude, especially after meeting her, made his insides boil.

And now he was here, in a sea of people that he mostly hated, and the one person he wanted to see that wasn't related to him was the one person he threw away an eternity with. Kai had skipped most of senior English so he wasn't quite sure on the definition of irony, but that might've been it.

He leaned forward, elbows on knees, and placed his head in his hands. "She goes to Nova Scotia, she gets the magic, back to Mystic Falls, does the spell," he said into the heels of his palms. He lifted his head and looked at Damon. "That should've taken two weeks, tops. It's been a month."

"You don't know Bonnie," Damon said to the flames. "She's fine. She just gets a little caught up sometimes, making sure everything's perfect. She'll be here any day now."

"And if she's doesn't show up? Let me make this clear, Damon, I'm not going by myself. For one, I don't trust you or your sad little posse to let me back out and for another, Bonnie likely won't come with me."

"Why do you care?" Damon asked suddenly, finally turning around. "You were using her for her Bennett blood to get out and hey, look, now you're free. Woo. Leave her alone."

"Apparently if I do that, you'll be perfectly fine with leaving her there forever," Kai snapped. "I put a crossbow bolt in her stomach and after you were gone I listened to her crying while she choked on her own blood. Do you know what that sounded like?" His voice had begun to waver somewhere in the middle and he looked down, not able to look Damon in the eye. "Bonnie has this – she doesn't scream much, you know? But every time I hurt her there was this, I don't know, this hitch in her voice. Like every time I hurt her, she was surprised by it. And that's all I dream about. That hitch."

He expected a punch, a snarky comment, something, but after a long moment of silence he looked up to Damon's downturned face. The vampire's eyes were closed and clench, his breathing too perfectly even to be natural. Kai was suddenly both hideously uncomfortable and very curious; he'd not been the only person to ever hurt Bonnie Bennett.

Damon's face relaxed and he shook his head. "There's nothing – _no one –_ that can hurt Bon over there. My brother needs me _right now._ I can't keep letting these things happen to him, Kai. It'll have to wait."

Kai wasn't used to get angry on behalf of other people, but in that moment he would've love to break every bone in Damon Salvatore's body. _Relax._ His handle on his emotions was still a little wonky and he felt like he spent a good portion of his days now standing in one place and monitoring each breath, willing his mind to go blank.

He did that now and when the magic finally fizzled out on his fingertips, he stood. Damon wasn't the only person who missed Bonnie, and besides, when Kai got her back he could use this whole thing as ammunition the next time she tried to tell him what good and selfless people her friends were compared to him.

"I'm waiting until the next full moon to go back," Kai said, buttoning up his coat. "If you change your mind and decide to maybe be a halfway decent person, rescue your best friend from the same hell hole she saved you from..." Damon's shoulders twitch a little, but otherwise no response. Kai shrugged. "Right. Pleasure as always."

Next up, Elena Gilbert, Damon's prettier and much dumber better half. At the very least he could probably trick her into going.

* * *

"Have we learned anything?"

Bonnie set her book down with a yawn, leaning back into the arms of the settee to stare at the ceilings. "Death curses are incredibly powerful and come from witches who perform primarily ancestral magic," she responded in a near-robotic tone. This was not the first time Kol had asked the question. "The Algiers apparently also worked quite a bit with the Treme coven."

He scoffed, just as he had the first three times he asked her that question. "I could've told you that, little witch. There's a thin line between a curse and a hex and an even thinner line between those who perform them."

"Death curses still have to maintain the balance, Kol. It would've taken the life of any witch who tried to perform it on her own. That means you were cursed by a coven. So we have that. Maybe the Tremes borrowed a spell? We'll check them out tomorrow in New Orleans."

"If it is a curse at all," Kol argued. "Maybe your pet theory is wrong. Was Damon cursed?"

Bonnie sighed and rubbed at her brow, thinking of Damon and the pregnant lady, of Kai and his stupid coven. _This isn't your hell, Damon, it's mine._ But in the end, May 10, 1994 had just been a coincidence of time.

Her head was killing her. She hadn't slept since yesterday, the two of them choosing to read through the night instead of prolonging their research another day. The fire had gone out hours ago and only now, when she had stopped reading and focusing, did she notice how stiff and cold she was.

She ignored Kol's question and held out a hand towards the fireplace. _"Incendia."_

The fire roared to life with incredible force, more than Bonnie had intended or even knew she had the energy within her to summon. As the flames escaped the pit, licking up to the mantle and all along the sides and baseboard, Kol darted out of his chair and had dragged her settee back by a foot by the time Bonnie managed to lessen the fire's fury. She stared at the flames for a long moment, then at her hand.

Why did this keep happening? Getting lost in the spell going home, unable to do a simple location, the _vatos_ and aneurysms that she thrown at Kol that had been far too weak and now a rudimentary fire spell that was far too powerful. It was like her magic was out of her control.

"Well, you certainly like to keep things interesting, Bonnie," Kol said lightly.

Bonnie clenched her fist. The flames burned higher, brighter, turning blue at the base, and Kol hissed. She relaxed and the flames dimmed. She did this a few more times, growing a bit less uneasy every time the fire responded to her call. Bonnie was tired, that was all. She controlled her magic, not the other way around.

She turned to Kol, an apology on her lips for nearly scorching the vampire who had died in flames, but the words died when she saw the look on his face, gazing down at her. His eyes looked so sad, but the soft smile curving across his lips was even sadder. He looked wistful, and she wondered what he was missing. One thousand years was a terribly long time to miss something.

Then his face cleared and he roughly shoved the couch back to its original place, nearly jostling Bonnie from her seat, and crossing back to his chair and collapsing into it, picking up his decanter of blood and taking a long swallow.

Kol had been drinking from it nearly all night; it was nearing empty just a few hours ago. And now it was full again. Bonnie gaped. "How-?"

Kol raised his eyebrows and she gestured at the decanter. "Oh. It refills every night," he informed her. "Suppose it's a bit like those apples that keep popping up over and over in the kitchen."

Bonnie folded her arms, leaning back. "The Beauchantes had a decanter of blood just conveniently lying around, waiting to be caught in a magical time loop?"

"Look at this house, Bonnie. If Dorian Gray and Frankenstein were interior decorators, this would be their showcase. Doesn't the bottle of blood complete the room?"

The house was pretty dark and gloomy, but she expected that had Kol not smashed half the furniture and with the right lighting, it might actually be somewhat cheerful, in a Scooby Doo Villain kind of way. She tapped the fingers of one hand against her arm, waiting.

"Or," Kol said, looking into the ruby red liquid swirling in the decanter. "My brother had it on hand in 1820 and I nicked it from our house."

"Your house?" Bonnie asked, sitting up straighter. "In New Orleans?"

"Where else?"

"Well, why aren't you there?" Bonnie asked. "Surely it'd be more bearable at home-"

"I said 'house,'" Kol said harshly. "Not home." He grimaced and took another swig from the bottle. Bonnie watched him watching the fire. He looked so much like Damon on his worst days, when he was convinced that everything was hopeless. Sitting in one of the high back chairs he had pulled over from the dining room table they never used, bottle of whiskey in hand, drinking away his sorrows like it wouldn't take him hours to get drunk. Kol was different, though. His back was straighter, his eyes keener. He hadn't gone dead to the world.

"You're handling this whole prison thing really well."

He opened his mouth then seemed to absorb what she said, turning to her with surprise. "I tried to kill myself with a White Oak Stake, love."

"Damon used to drink. All the time. I would go whole days by myself because he had finished three bottles the night before and couldn't move off the couch. And-" Her mouth shut with an audible click around Kai's name, not wanting to explain how Kai had dealt with the prison world and not entirely sure she actually could. She had looked into Stefan and Elena's eyes when they had turned off their humanity as vampires, and Kai almost looked the same, but there had been flickers of an actual person lost in the dark.

 _I want to be more like you, Bonnie._ And she had believed him, because his eyes were so blue then, like Matt's and Caroline's and Damon's. It was the first time she hadn't felt completely alone with Kai, like someone had actually been there with her instead of a million miles inside his own head, plotting and planning and manipulating.

"I tried to kill myself," she said in a near whisper, looking anywhere but Kol. "After Damon left and I was – I finished off all the bottles he didn't and when that was done…there was just me, in the whole world. It was so quiet. So I was going to lock myself in with the Camaro in the garage and go to sleep and never wake up."

She could hear the thud of the decanter as Kol placed it on the ground and the rustle of his clothes as he leaned forward. She hurriedly kept talking just so he wouldn't say anything. "You've done pretty well, for being alone. If it had been me or Damon, we would've…so, you know. Good job, I guess." She inwardly cursed herself for sounded so idiotic, but Kol merely chuckled.

"Thanks ever so, love." He sat back again and resumed staring at the fire and she waited out the struggle she saw playing across his face. When he turned once more to find her watching curiously, his face was caught between a smirk and a grimace. "It's not so bad, really. This place. My brother used to regularly stick a dagger in my chest and toss me in a box for centuries at a time. Compared to that, this is rather nice. At least I can move."

"But weren't you asleep?" Bonnie asked curiously, tilting her head. The glare she received for that was quite scathing, so she rushed to explain. "I mean, I've seen you – your family – in the coffins. You just look like you're sleeping. I thought it was like, I don't know, a magical coma."

"Do you think Niklaus would keep doing it if that's all it was, a nice nap?" Kol responded with a sneer. "That wouldn't be punishment enough for whatever imagined slight he felt against him.

"We don't sleep. Ha! We should be so lucky. I can still feel what it was like, ninety years of lying in a cold box with a knife in my chest that my big brother put there. And I swear I could hear them – Elijah or Rebekah or Klaus – standing over me, talking to me. They never talked to Finn, the twats. But sometimes they apologized to me. Sometimes they told me what an idiot I was. Elijah would say something daft, how it was only a matter of time before they set me free again, and Rebekah would make promises to stand by me, if only I behaved. Nik was always the worst. 'We'll be a family again, Kol.' I hated that. It made me want to scream. But I couldn't."

Bonnie tried to imagine what that was like, to be trapped in one place, to hear people but never respond, to be conscious of how vulnerable you were and be completely unable to do anything about it. When she had died the first time, after Kol was gone and she was fading away, she used to scream at people on her bad days. She would go to the Grille when Matt was working and run her hands along all the bottles of alcohol behind the bar, wanting to move just one so he would look at her, but they never budged and he never did. She would visit Damon at the boarding house and follow him around, asking incessant question that would've driven him crazy if only he could hear them, but he couldn't.

And then, when she was done, she would visit Elena and Caroline at college, sleeping so comfortably on those narrow mattresses, and cry huge, loud sobs at the foot of their beds. But her friends never woke.

Bonnie took in a shuddering breath. "I didn't know. I'm so-"

"Don't say that you're sorry," Kol snapped. "There's only one person who's ever going to apologize, and it is not you, Bonnie Bennett."

Bonnie nodded mutely, willing the silence to come back and envelope them again, before something occurred to her and her face became a mask of horror. "But, you said you found the daggers here. That you willingly daggered yourself. Why?"

Kol looked like a lost little boy, looking down at his hands with large, sad eyes. "I thought – it sounds so stupid now – I thought I might hear them again."

* * *

Elena was perhaps not as dumb as previously expected.

"I am not going anywhere with you," she stated bluntly, slamming another binder down on the desk she was working at.

Kai eyed her furious binder-tossing and resisted the urge to remove his hands from where they gripped the edge of the desk. "Not even for Bonnie?"

Elena snorted. "That's expecting me to believe that a sociopath would want to help anybody." Kai opened his mouth to protest and _slam_ went another binder. "And, beyond that, expecting me to believe that _you_ would want to help Bonnie, the girl you purposely trapped in the prison world in the first place."

"That's twisting the facts," Kai accused, pointing a finger at Elena. "It wasn't purpose, it was convenience."

Elena glared at him, slamming another binder down. "I don't trust you, and I don't believe you want to help. Damon and I are going to find a way to rescue Bonnie and when we do, you are never going to see her again. Are we clear?"

"Isn't that Bonnie's choice?" Kai asked.

 _Slam._ "Are. We. Clear?"

"You're really enjoying this, huh?" Elena very nearly stomped her foot and Kai grinned, continuing. "Did you learn your intimidation techniques from Damon? Very impressive, I'm quaking in my sneakers."

"You're an ass, and I'm busy," Elena shot back. "Your sister is a slave driver."

"I mean, yeah, she raised my siblings when my parents were too busy. Which was all the time. She's got lots of practice."

"Oh, then she must've been so relieved when you _murdered them_ ," Elena simpered, sickly sweet with a wicked smile to match. Kai's smile dropped fast and Elena's next binder flew out of her hands and hit her hard in the face.

She batted it down, blood gushing from her nose that she stemmed with her sleeve. She glared at him, gesturing down at herself. "This was one of my very last gore-free shirts."

He shrugged. "My bad. So about rescuing your best friend?"

"If you think I am going to sit calmly with my eyes close while you chant around my head, saying God knows what in Latin, you're a moron," Elena said acidly, dabbing at her skin until her shirt came back clean. "But, oh wait, I already knew that."

"I'm trying to _help,"_ Kai insisted, frustrated beyond belief.

Elena leaned forward, canines suddenly very long when she opened her mouth to speak. " _I don't believe you."_

To his abject horror, Kai's cheeks and eyes began burning. He didn't understand. He was trying to help, to do a good thing, and they were spitting in his face. "I saved her before, remember?" he protested, hating how whiny his voice sounded.

"So we would help you out. What's in it for you now, Kai, hm?" Elena asked. She stared at him for a long moment, her fangs receding, and in those eyes he saw something of what the human Elena Gilbert must've been like. "I don't trust you. Just in general. It's a good, all purpose life rule that I've taken a long time to learn. But I especially don't trust you about Bonnie. I've let too many things hurt her. I'm not going to give you another shot. Goodbye, Kai."

And then she returned to her binders, effectively dismissing him. Kai straightened away from the desk, gaping at her, the burning in his eyes growing worse before, on instinct, he looked at the ultra bright fluorescent lights above him. After two deep breaths, the burn retreating and Kai could move, nearly stumbling out of the room and into his sister's arms.

"Kai?" Josette sounded concerned. "What are you doing here?"

"Launching a rescue mission," Kai responded, wincing when his voice cracked. "I'm having a little trouble achieving lift-off, though."

Jo propped him up against the wall, sighing. "You're not making any sense."

"I was following your advice," Kai snapped, pushing away from her. "About Bonnie. But I can't go alone, Sissy, I cannot go _alone."_

Comprehension dawned on Jo's face and he let her process this while he thumped himself on the side of the head. _Come on, Kai. Stop being such a pussy. They don't want to come willingly? Then fucking make them._

"Stop that," Josie commented sharply, grabbing his hand and placing it down by his side. Kai looked up at her.

"Stop what?"

"Plotting. You're wearing your plotting face."

Kai sent her a nonplussed look. "This is just my face."

Josette rolled her eyes. "And what a face. So you asked Elena to come with you?"

"After I asked Damon yesterday."

"Damon said no to a way to save Bonnie?" Jo asked, eyebrows raising high in surprise. "He nearly took Ric's head off for screwing up one of his own a couple of months ago."

Kai sneered. "Seems he used up all his hero juice early. Says the timing's not right. Something about his moon-eyed brother and his bitchy Barbie vamp girlfriend-"

"Stefan and Caroline."

"What the fuck ever. He was a no go. And Elena…" Kai looked into the room he had just left through the window set into the door. Elena was staring down at a blue binder, tracing what looked like letters in the cover over and over. There was a _B,_ then an _O,_ then an _N,_ then another-

 _Oh._ Kai frowned, watching Elena draw her best friend's name three more times before turning back to his twin's face, her frown still an exact match of his even after all these years.

"You remember, when we were little, and you used to make those miniature storms?" He asked her, a small, grim smile gracing his face when she nodded. Josette used to drag him out to the woods, _look at this Kai,_ and create these microscopic wind storms that he would always try to mimic. She always dried his tears when he failed, but she had stopped when they'd grown older and his tears had become shoves and hits. "You'd send that thing everywhere, no matter what was in the way. You tore up Mom's garden once and laughed. You remember how much fun you had, how great you told me it felt, how hard you smiled? I used to think your face would break. I used to _hope_ it would. But after, you would get so sick. Too much magic. You'd crawl into bed beside me and you said it felt like-"

"I swallowed the storm," Josette finished, her eyes gleaming brightly.

Kai nodded jerkily, the waved his hand in a circle. "This – whole thing – it's like that. All the time." Jo stared back at him, face perfectly motionless and blank but for her shining eyes. Kai wanted her to say something, anything, but as he stood there and her face grew only more remote, he felt the air around them grow colder. He turned and walked away without another word.

* * *

Prison worlds were quiet.

When she first arrived in 1994 with Damon, there were many things that Bonnie thought would drive her insane. Damon was at the top of the list. Not having modern day technology was embarrassingly high, as was the fashion and the TV. No weather beyond the sweltering May heat. The lack of magic.

But it was the quiet that got to her the most. There were no birds, no cars driving down the street, no dogs barking, all the things that Bonnie had never noticed in the real world. But when they were gone, it was all she could hear. She couldn't sleep for it, and when she could she would wake up a few hours later to the unending pressure of silence.

It was better when Damon started rooming with her. He didn't need to breathe and so his body would stop whenever he lost consciousness, but he was a restless sleeper and she used to use his tossing and turning as a lullaby.

She had never had silence with Kai. He was always talking in that odd cadence of his. He left gaps in his conversations even when he knew she wouldn't fill them, and when she realized he had been making up responses in his head for so long he just assumed they were part of the conversation was the first time Bonnie had felt sorry for him.

When they were both gone the silence found her, got inside of her. She would lose hours of time sitting in one place and straining for the slightest sound. She was afraid to speak in case the sound of her voice drowned out another noise. When she came back to herself she would feel like she had been turned inside-out. Talking to that camera had probably been the only reason Bonnie had lived as long as she did, but she hadn't truly lost the quiet until Kol had found her.

Now, when she startled awake in the middle of the night, Bonnie thought the silence had finally caught up to her again, and she waited frozen in her bed for what happened next. The silence would get so loud it sounded like screaming – or maybe that had just been here – and then it was like the quiet inside and out would equalize and she would relax into sleep again.

But then she heard it. Music, so faint she could barely make out the melody, floating through the air. Bonnie sat up in bed, trying to figure out what time it was. She had finally given up on the Algiers' books and gone to bed around three in the afternoon, leaving Kol nursing his bottle of blood in front of the fire. She had changed out of her now slightly musty borrowed clothing, changed into a short sleeved chemise from the wardrobe in the Rose Room, and been asleep as soon as she hit the pillow.

She shoved the covers down and was out of bed in an instant, holding her breath. It was like listening to a radio with a bad signal, the music fading in and out, and as she crept out of her room and into the hall she realized she was only hearing the loudest parts of the song. It became incrementally louder with every step she took down the stairs, but it was still just a vague jumble of notes when she reached the landing.

She peered around the bannister into the living room area. Kol's chair was empty and the fire had long burned down. It was completely dark; Bonnie realized with a sickening jolt that there wasn't even a full moon outside. This curse wasn't even built around a reoccurring celestial event to draw power from.

For just a moment, she considered calling out to Kol, but she shut her mouth with an audible click and turned towards the door. She grabbed one of the several coats hung on the rack close to the door and shrugged it on then opened the door carefully and slid outside after creating the narrowest possible gap she could get through.

The music was clearer out in the night, the song starting to take shape. Bonnie shoved her feet in one of the many pairs of muddy boots sitting just outside the door and began walking in the direction of the sound.

Seventy feet away from the house Bonnie was almost positive she could make out the sound of a cacophony of trumpets. Two hundred feet away she had reached the gate leading out to main road to New Orleans and stepped out onto the dirt road. The wind whipped all around her, hair blowing across her face and coat and chemise flapping hard against her leg as she took one last look at the house, a tiny pang going through her at the idea of Kol waking up to an empty house again, before she shoved it down and began walking.

She didn't know how far she walked before the piano became audible, somehow sounding mournful despite the relative cheer of the song. From what she could hear, it was a bombastic, sweeping number, like the ones they used to play at the beginning of old movies, and it was coming from New Orleans.

Maybe Kol wasn't alone here. It would be impossible for anyone normal to make this much noise, but as far as Bonnie could tell, no one who got trapped in a prison world was normal. A clever spell could easily get all the instruments going at once, or even create the song out of nothing. If it was a witch, or another vampire, or even a werewolf, they might have information Kol and Bonnie didn't.

There was a noise, under the music. A muttering, endless noise that sounded so familiar but was impossible to place. The road was narrow but straight and Bonnie closed her eyes as she walked, placing one foot directly in front of the other and concentrating as hard as she could. Almost subconsciously she began walking to the rhythm of the music and a smile crossed her face. It was creepy as hell – _ghost music_ – but it was sound that she hadn't heard in nearly a year and it was beautiful. In two worlds of unending sameness, Bonnie had forgotten beauty.

The music took a sudden, dramatic turn after what was probably a mile, the sound become darker and angrier. It was almost clear now, and when she opened her eyes she could make out a very dim glow coming from the direction of the city, almost as if someone had gone through and lit the street lamps.

And then the glow, the trees, the sky all disappeared, taken up by Kol suddenly filling the space in front of her, his expression as black as night. Bonnie's heart leapt into her throat and she stumbled to a stop in front of him. "What…?"

"You weren't there," Kol said, his voice dangerously even. "I couldn't hear you."

Bonnie opened and closed her mouth several times, then straightened her shoulders, gesturing beyond him. "Did you know about this?"

His gaze went to the side as he listened to the music for a few seconds. Then he closed them, breathed in, and hummed the next few bars perfectly.

He was too much of a coward to say it out loud. Bonnie seethed. "You knew about this and you _didn't tell me_?"

"I know what it is, and it isn't important," Kol responded, still in a too-perfect calm tone.

"Oh, really?" Bonnie fumed. "You know? Well, explain it to me, Kol, what it is?"

Kol stepped closer to her. "Not. Important."

"What the hell? There's music coming from _nothing,_ there are lights from _nowhere_. Is someone else here?"

Kol's jaw tensed so hard she could hear his teeth grind from where she stood. The music filled the silence between them for nearly a minute as he stood there, unresponsive, and she stared back, not willing to back down on this.

"No," he finally said.

Bonnie released a breath she hadn't known she was holding. "So what's making the noise? The light? You didn't tell me! This is magic, and you didn't tell me!"

"It doesn't concern you," Kol bit out. Something in Bonnie snapped and her hand came up in a fist before landing solidly across his jaw. His head snapped to the side and Bonnie stepped away from him, holding her now pounding hand and suddenly panting.

Then, he began laughing, so loud it drowned out the music which was clearly reaching its crescendo. "All that magic," he said, working his jaw with his hand. "All that power, and you punch me." His laugh devolved in sad, semi-hysterical giggles and Bonnie looked away when she saw his shoulders shake.

"Oh, I'm sorry, love," he finally said, wiping at his eyes. "You're just so pathetic it curves straight around being sad and slingshots into funny. I didn't tell you? What could you do? You can't even control a simple incendia spell."

He was good, but Kai had been better, and Silas could outplay either of them without breaking a sweat. "Don't turn this around on me, and don't think I forgot how you nearly dragged me out of New Orleans that first night. You're scared? I don't know why and I don't care. I want to go home, and you are in my way."

Kol's smile gave way to something murderous. "I am not afraid. Certainly not of you. We are turning around and going home, and I'll take you to the Treme haven tomorrow."

"You'll take me now," Bonnie refuted, willing herself to stay calm despite the goosebumps rising on her skin from the sheer proximity of an Original's fury. "And on the way we can check out a light show. You're not scared? Prove it."

Kol sneered and then there was a familiar whooshing sound and Bonnie was suddenly flying across the earth, held tightly to Kol's chest.

" _MOTUS!"_ she screamed, and the next moment she was sailing through the air before gravity remembered her. She hit the dirt hard, skidding along the rocks for several feet before coming to a stop flat on her back, staring up at the stars.

Dazed, she just lay there for several seconds, but soon the adrenaline began tingling in her arms and legs and she was rolling to her back, then up to her feet, then taking off at a run towards the light of New Orleans. She had no idea how far she had flung Kol and wasn't stopping to find out.

She had only made it about thirty feet before she felt arms around her waist and Kol pulled her to a stop, pulling her back sharply to him. "You're bleeding," he snarled in her ear, his voice such a low growl she could feel it down her spine.

"Come on," she said. No, she was begging, she realize with dismay. "Come on. You can't stop me. You know you can't stop me. Come on, Kol, this could be it, I could go home, _please."_

Kol shook her roughly. "This isn't it, I'm telling you."

"You don't know that!" Bonnie shouted. "You didn't even know where you were before I got here, how can you be sure?"

Kol fell silent, his arms loosening slightly around her but still locking her firmly in place. And to her sudden horror, all Bonnie could hear was her own labored breathing. The light was still there, though significantly dimmer than before, but the silence was back to claim her again. She sagged in his arms. She could feel Kol shake his head, his sigh against her neck. She was so scared, and so tired of being so scared.

"It's something better left here, Bonnie," Kol whispered. "In the dark, with the ghosts and the dark. I can't take it with me. I cannot carry it."

Bonnie closed her eyes, smiled grimly, and placed her hands over his, holding them tight before superheating them so fast she could already feel the blisters forming on his skin when Kol pulled away with a yell.

She turned to him, still smiling an odd, bizarre smile that didn't feel right on her face. "It's a good thing you've got me, then."

Kol looked up from his already healing hands to her. "You could kill me," she continued. "Snap my neck right now, and you'll never see it again, whatever it is. But my pet theory isn't wrong. This is a curse, Kol, and it was put in place to torture you. The best kind of torture-" she took a deep breath, remembering coming to in 1994 and how finding Kai's message hurt even more than the stab wound. "-is the kind that isn't visible. You kill me and you'll be so broken within a year you won't remember your sister's face." Kol flinched hard at that, so hard she almost felt guilty.

"I wasn't going to kill you," Kol said, which was not the protestation she was expecting. "I would never kill you."

"Then you'll help me? This could be it. A clue. _Something._ "

He balked at that, his face so lost and scared and for a moment Bonnie wondered how old he had been when his father killed him and he next woke up a monster. Then it was gone, the thousand year old Original back in place, as Kol looked beyond her. "I am a Mikaelson. I do not suffer slights lightly. I'm going to make somebody pay for this."

"I'll take that as a yes," Bonnie said, then made to turn on her heel. Kol surged forward, grabbing at her elbow.

"Hang on, love. You're in a bloody nightgown."

Bonnie rolled her eyes. "No one's here to care about propriety."

"No, I mean a literal bloody nightgown. You scraped yourself up pretty bad, and I'm dead tired. Honestly," he promised at her skeptical look. "The music and lights are gone. We both rest up tonight, I'll take you into town tomorrow. We'll hit the Treme haven and then stay the night. September 28, 1821. It wasn't the whole day, love. It was just the night."

Bonnie wrenched her elbow out of his grasp. "I already walked this whole way, Kol, I'm not turning around."

"Er, actually…" Kol muttered, then pointed to his right. Bonnie followed his direction and then gasped. They were right outside the gate of the Beauchante mansion. She turned back, still open-mouthed, to Kol's smug grin. "Well, I am the fastest Original. One thousand years, never lost a race. Well, except for that one time Bex booby-trapped the woods. You do not want to fall into a spike pit going 200 kilometers an hour."

"If you're lying," Bonnie said loudly, cutting into his story before he could get carried away. He had done it again, switched on a dime and leaving her reeling. "I will-"

"Oh, save the high school threats, love," Kol said, walking over to wrench the gate open then gesturing with a grimacing smile. "We both know you can't live without me, either."

It wasn't a promise, but Bonnie trusted those even less than she did Kol. And the cuts on her legs were starting to burn with a worrying intensity. So she took one last look at the dying light of New Orleans, then headed back to the house, Kol on her heels.


	5. Some Sun Has Got To Rise

Hey guys. Once again this chapter is part of a much bigger one that I had to split up. It's just this is the busiest day in the world for my characters and I need to get it all out. On the other hand, that means the next chapter shouldn't take a week to write.

Which brings me to my next point. For those of you who review, thank you, I love you dearly. I love the favorites and the follows. But writing is hard, and takes up a lot of time, and I'm honestly not getting enough feedback to justify spending a lot of my time writing this story. If you enjoy it, leave me a message letting me know what you liked. If you didn't, let me know that as well. But while the first couple of chapters were written for fun, because I wanted to write them, now they're being written to continue a story, and if so few people are interested in the story, what's the point of writing it? Reviews are lovely, and my reviewers are lovely people. Be a lovely person!

Songs for this chapters are "Dark Paradise" by Lana Del Rey and "Despair" by Yeah Yeah Yeahs. Give them a listen!

* * *

Chapter Five: Some Sun Has Got To Rise

* * *

One of the truly great joys of being a witch was never getting a hangover. Just a wave of the hand and _poof –_ no pain.

Of course this only really applied if the witch in question did not, in fact, get plastered out of his mind on embarrassingly cheap beer and pass out in a position on the couch that was so precarious that he did, in fact, fall from it in the middle of the night and was now waking up in a pool of his drool on the floor, his head pounding in the same rhythm as his little sister's persistent and _very loud_ banging on his door.

"I know you're in there," Liv yelled. _Knock knock knock. "_ You have no job." _Knock knock knock._ "You have no friends." _Knock knock knock._ "You have no life. What you do have is my _Terminator_ DVDs and I want them back, Kai!"

"Please kill me," he prayed to the floor, then with great concentrated effort and a groan loud enough that Liv stopped knocking, he heaved himself up to his hands and knees. His pounding head changed its tune at this movement, now beating a fast staccato rhythm into his skull. He put one hand on his coffee table, nudging at the beer can pyramid his inebriated self probably had a grand time building last night, and one hand on the couch, which was missing half its cushions, and tugged himself up and to his feet.

The room swam sickeningly. Kai let out a belch then clapped his hand over his mouth when it threatened to turn into something more. His shirt was wrinkled and stiff in some places with his sweat, he had sometime in the night misplaced his pants, and his stylish five-o'clock-somewhere stubble had grown into wanna-be hipster scraggle.

Kai had been in many, many low places in his life. Realizing his father never loved him, being tricked by his dopey twin sister, the Prison World, the first eighty or so times he'd tried to kill himself, and that one time when Bonnie freaking Bennett sent her magic away in a _goddamn teddy bear._ But this was a whole new level of pathetic. After he'd left Jo yesterday he just wanted to make it all stop, and while normally that would mean maiming something, there was always the possibility that at any moment this bizarre guilt thing would start extended to strangers and at that point Kai would have no choice but to kill himself.

Kai rather liked being alive, so he chose alcohol instead. It seemed to work wonders for Damon, so he thought he'd give it a try.

"Kai? Are you dead?" Liv asked loudly through the door. "Let me know so I can start preparing for my own inevitable demise."

"I'm dead. I'm so dead," Kai replied back in a whispered yell that made his teeth ache, holding a hand to his head and summoning the will-power to mutter a healing spell. "Tell them to put you in blue for the viewing, you look terrible in black."

"I look awesome in everything," Liv shot back. He could practically see her flipping her hair over her shoulder. "But seriously, open the door."

His head was already clearing up, enough for him to lumber over to the door, draw back the deadbolt, take down the wards, and open it to greet his sister.

The light shone so brightly off her hair that he hissed and drew back, clapping his hands over his ears at the sound of Liv's gasp and ensuing giggles. "Oh, my God. You smell like a brewery. No, like a _bathroom_ in a brewery. Kai, what did you _do_?"

Kai glared at her through one narrow eyelid. "That better be rhetorical."

Liv just laughed harder, pushing her way past the small space he'd left between himself and the door frame and into his apartment. She took in his trashed living room, the beer pyramid, noticing his missing jeans hanging from the ceiling fan at the same time Kai did. Kai shut the door gently behind him and walked past his sister, nearly doubled over in mirth, to collapse on his sole remaining couch cushions and will another healing spell through his body.

Liv finally calmed down enough to straighten and wipe at her eyes. "Rough night, big brother? Jo said you seemed upset, but not the 'one man rave' kind."

"Oh, Sissy said, did she?" Kai sneered, bad mood boiling over. Liv's smile dropped from her face completely. "You two had a nice chat about poor Kai?"

Liv's expression clouded over rapidly, her stance becoming defensive. "Can't blame us for keeping tabs on you, Malachai. You have this really bad habit of snapping and killing your siblings."

"Get your crap and get out or watch history repeat itself," Kai snapped, boiling at the thought of sisters laughing at him behind his back. Pathetic Kai who can't even handle emotions. He didn't need anybody's condescension, certainly not a member's of the fucking Gemini Coven.

But as he watched his sister's red, angry face pale so dramatically that her big blue eyes were the only color left his anger melted into the guilt constantly churning at the bottom of his stomach, turning into something else. But this one he knew, this one his father had taught him well: shame.

"Shit, Liv, I'm sorry," he said with a groan, tipping his head back onto the back of the couch. "I didn't mean it, I'm just…I don't know."

"You know, other people might be able to get away with that," Liv said in a shaky but forceful voice. "But not you. You don't get to do that."

Kai stared at her for a long time, his beautiful, headstrong, _incredibly_ overdramatic little sister. This was all Liv was to him; he honestly couldn't really remember what she looked like as a four year old. She was brand new to him, but he was an old thing to her, the monster under her bed come back to haunt her again.

"Okay," he said, because he didn't want to promise things to her. Kai never kept his promises. "Okay."

Liv released a long slow breath. "Okay."

"Your movies are on the TV, by the way."

"I-" Liv started to say something, then stopped, looking conflicted. There was a furrow between her eyebrows, the same one that had always appeared on their mother's face whenever she looked at Kai. Then Liv moved all at once, hands akimbo and marching towards him until she was perched in front of him, knee-to-knee, on the coffee table. "Look, that's not the reason I came. I don't…I don't care about you, not really. But my life depends on yours, and if you're not alright, then neither am I. So, are you alright?"

"Well, not anymore," Kai said sarcastically. Liv rolled her eyes.

"Don't give me that. We're Parkers, not Partridges, and I have seen you stab way too many people to ever be comfortable in your company."

Kai sighed. The healing spell was mostly finished and he felt awkward having this deep conversation with his little sister in nothing but his boxers and a musty shirt. He used his magic to push Liv and the table back a few inches – holding his breath when the can pyramid wobbled then settled – and then stood, reaching and retrieving his jeans.

"I'm fine, Olivia," he told her, folding them in half then over his arm. "I just had a bad day. Strangely enough, even after forty years, you don't get used to them. So I went on a bender."

"Jo said you were…trying to help Bonnie?" Liv asked gently.

Kai looked down, sick of thinking and talking and worrying over the littlest witch. One more lost girl in the world. Did it even really matter, saving her? She had no family, and her friends seemed to cope stupendously well with her absence. Who was going to mourn Bonnie Bennett if she never came home?

"I think that's great," Liv said softly. Kai's head snapped up. "Bonnie used to help me with my magic and I was – oh, god, I was the worst. But she did the best she could with me. I probably would've lost my freaking mind if it wasn't for Bonnie."

"Maybe you could return the favor," Kai replied evenly, seizing the opening she had left for him.

Liv shook her head. "I'm not going into the prison world with you, Kai. I don't trust you. But that spell you were doing when I stabbed you in the Salvatore house? I could help with that. We could check on her."

Kai stared at her, a little gob-smacked. "I – why?"

"Because I need you to be okay," Liv replied intensely. "And apparently that's only gonna happen when you know she is, too."

* * *

Bonnie woke to the sound of whistling. At first she thought it was the music from last night, then she realized Kol was, once again, sitting on the couch beneath the window, watching her sleep.

He was flicking through one of the Algiers books, whistling incredibly high and clear a song Bonnie had never heard before. It sounded like something that would be played around a fire while a wrinkled old storyteller weaved an awesome tale of gods and men in a village years ago. For all she knew, she was probably more correct than not. Kol had lived a thousand years; the songs and stories he had picked up would probably take longer than her life to be sung.

"This is creepy," she told him. "Maybe being the very definition of the word means you don't even know when you're being it, so let me help you out. This," she waved a hand at him. "Is creepy."

Kol's whistle ended on a long, low note and he closed the book with a snap. "I was bored, love. I don't sleep much. Always afraid I'll wake up in a box. And then I remember, I am in the box. Just because it's now the size of the entire world doesn't mean it's not a box."

"That was very deep, Kol," Bonnie said dryly, far too disoriented to have this conversation. "Now get out."

"That's right. We have work to do. Meet me downstairs when you're ready. I don't suppose you'll let me run us into town?" When Bonnie shook her head, he stood with a sigh and left, muttering about wasted time.

Bonnie scrubbed herself clean with the water and cloth from the basin, then opened the wardrobe. The pants Kol had brought her that first day were wonderful, but the shirt had been stiff and itchy and the sleeves too long to be manageable. So after she tugged on the pants, she went to the wardrobe and pulled out the various chemises and shifts she found. One was a pale green, thick and soft, that fell to mid-thigh, and though she felt ridiculous pulling it on with her pants and boots it was incredibly comfortable. She grabbed the coat from last night, shoved the cure into one boot and the knife in the other, then made her way downstairs.

Kol was of course impeccably dressed, but she had never once seen him looking anything less than runway-ready, just like his siblings. Vanity seemed to be a Mikaelson family trait. "You ready?" she asked, tugging on the cloak and pulling her hair, nearly shoulder length now, from under the collar.

Kol was silent from where he waited by the door, and when she looked at him from under her eyelashes she could see the lines of tension in his body and face. She'd seen the look in his eyes before; in Jeremy's face the night Qetsiyah died, in Damon's the moment before the light swallowed him up and took him back home. Like he was never going to see her again.

She took a step towards him and the look vanished, the smirk and quirk returning in an instant. Kol moved to open the door then inclined his head, waving her forward. "After you, little witch."

The first mile was passed to the tune of Kol's song again, this time in a hum but with a mile and a half left to go, Kol's song ended again and he spoke. "So. I told you one of my secrets. How about an even exchange, love? Tell me a story of Bonnie Bennett's greatest pretend."

"I don't have secrets, Kol," Bonnie responded slowly, eyes caught on the clusters of iris and dogwood on the side of the road.

"Of course you do," Kol said. "For example, the fact that you smell wrong."

That got Bonnie's attention. "Excuse me?"

"Oh, don't misunderstand, you're still there, underneath it all," Kol reassured her, holding his hands up in pacification. "But there's something else, spread all over your skin. That first night, I thought it was just the blood on your clothes throwing me off, but it's been hanging all over you."

"You're not making any sense," Bonnie said, walking sideways a few steps away from him. "My blood smells different?"

"No, darling, _you_ do." Kol gave her a slow, lazy smile. "You smell like two people at the same time. And it's not your blood, it's your magic that's gone all – funny. Do you remember the night before that silly dance at your school? I had you up against the lockers and then you brought me to my knees." He gave an overdramatic shudder. "That was _glorious._ I'd never forget how that kind of power felt."

"Creepy," Bonnie said, pointing at him. "Also, you can _smell magic?"_

Kol's face scrunched as he shrugged his shoulder. "Smell. Feel. Both are rather inadequate for the actual sensation. I was quite personally acquainted with magic myself as a human, more so than any of my siblings save Finn, and when I woke up as…what I am, and it was gone-" He broke off there, sly smile sliding off his face as he looked to the ground.

Bonnie gaped at him in stupefaction. "You were a witch?" But even as she said it, she remembered his mother, the incredibly powerful witch Esther. Was it really any wonder she had passed on her skill to her children? Kol's knowledge of magic and respect of witches started to make far more sense. Then the second part of his statement sunk in. "And it was…I'm so sorry."

She'd lost her magic more than once. Had it forcibly ripped away, had it manipulated beyond her control, felt it drain out of her and into another. She'd even given it away once. And every time the loss was beyond what she thought herself capable of handling. The only thing that made it bearable was the knowledge that she could somehow get it back. Kol's was just _gone._

"Yes. Thank you," Kol said quietly, his eyes shuttered and somewhere very far away. He took a deep breath and continued with his story. "Well, after that, I thought it might be, I don't know, helpful to surround myself with witches. To watch them practice. To hear the words. They used to be in the old language then. _Heyri jötnar, heyri hrímþursar, synir Suttungs, sjalfir ásliðar._ "

Bonnie could feel the words skitter along her skin like ice, calling out to something deep and cold. Kol glanced at her knowingly. "I spent so much time with them that I began to notice how differently they felt from the rest of the world. Witches don't just contain magic, they _are_ magic. They – I can't describe it. They hummed, they sang, they smelled – brighter, maybe? Truly, a thousand years worth of words are wasted on me, what a tragedy.

"But you, Bonnie," he said, turning sharply towards her. "You sing two songs at the same time. It's maddening. So, really, you should tell your secret just to keep me sane."

"Assuming you're all there in the first place," Bonnie shot back, earning a self-deprecating smile from Kol. But he had piqued her curiosity about her magic. So she twisted the truth again, explaining that her magic had never come back after returning to life as the Anchor and her trek to Nova Scotia to take Qetsiyah's instead. She couldn't explain, even to herself, why she kept hiding Kai's existence from Kol, except that sometimes she had managed to convince herself that he was just a nightmare she had dreamed up one night and talking about him would make him real.

But Kol accepted her version readily enough, eyebrows rising high on his forehead. "So you're wearing another witch's skin, hm? Or, rather, you're letting her magic wear you."

Bonnie jerked back, stung. "Magic doesn't control me."

"And that was very convincing, love, but the proof is in the power. You're so detached from the magic that you nearly lit the Algiers brazier, an artifact so ridden with magic it's practically screaming, and you nearly blew us up yesterday. You really think you've got control?"

Bonnie stopped in the middle of the road, clenching her fists tight and remembering Silas wearing her dead boyfriend's face and screaming at her _control, Bonnie, control!_ Kol stopped at her, acknowledging her fury with a single imperious eyebrow raise.

"I forgot how fierce a witch's pride is," he clucked at her, shaking his head. "I'm not saying this to insult you, Bon, I'm simply telling you the truth. Come on, love, I watched your face in the flames yesterday. I've never seen a girl so lost as you."

"I just have to get used to it," Bonnie said through clenched teeth. "Her magic is different."

"Her magic is yours," Kol shot back. "But you won't let it in. You're letting the magic define you, when it should be the other way around. But hasn't that always been your story, little witch? I wonder what it is about it that frightens you so."

"I do not need this _from you_ ," Bonnie snarled, stalking past him down the road. Kol followed after her.

"That moment in your school - you weren't scared, were you?"

"I was also under the influence of some very dangerous magic," Bonnie said, walking faster and faster to stay one step ahead of him.

"Magic is only as dangerous as the person wielding it."

"Coming from an Original, not reassuring."

Kol blurred in front of her and she skidded to a halt, staring up at his very intent gaze. "You were glorious, and you were unafraid."

Bonnie hands were still in fists; she could feel her nails starting to gouge into her skin. She relaxed them, flexed them, felt the magic but not in her bones as it used to be. It fizzed and sparked over her skin but never went any deeper. Her magic had been a part of her. At first she had resented it, then she accepted it, and then she loved it. But magic had always proved to be a dangerous game for Bonnie.

Power was her grandmother's cold body on the bed; the whispers of one thousand witches in her head; the cold, dark thrill of Expression; Qetsiyah's heavy touch transferring the Anchor; the Other Side, vast and infinite and hers. Power was Klaus. Silas. Kai.

And God, it hurt.

"You think your magic is gone," Kol said softly. "But I still smell it, underneath. Because it's a part of you, love."

She met his eyes again, and she fought against the instinct to trust the sincerity in his eyes. Sincerity and magic did not mix well. She edged around him and began walking again. "I don't want to talk about this."

Kol did not let the matter drop entirely, making attempt after attempt to bring it up. Bonnie chose to distract him, asking him random questions every few minutes. Some just occurred to her, some she had wondered at for a while. For example, how old was he when he was turned?

"Horrible fact of my life, number three hundred and ninety-five: I don't know. I know Rebekah was eighteen because we had just celebrated her birthday and I'm at least three years older than her, so I say twenty-one."

"Sure. And that choice has nothing to do with the legal drinking age in America."

"You think I bother with legality?"

New Orleans appeared on the horizon, and Bonnie had learned that Kol could play the violin and the piano, spoke seven languages including the very broken French he had displayed before, had enjoyed the seventeenth century the most of all he had lived, and had come within inches of deflowering Elizabeth I. That last tidbit he had volunteered freely. She was still cringing in amused horror at it when they stopped at the crossroads they had their first day here.

"The Treme haven is in St. Louis Cemetery," Kol explained.

"Fantastic," Bonnie deadpanned. "When does the light show start?"

Kol took a long look off towards the west. "Eight forty-seven. They got started late."

"Who did?"

"The orchestra," Kol replied bluntly. Bonnie opened her mouth, ready to pursue this new information, but he barreled on. "Now, listen to me. Treme witches are the embodiment of sacrificial magic. Do not touch anything in their haven. Every inch of that place is covered in blood, even if you can't see it. If it gets on you, it won't come off, ever."

"Were you scared of them?" Bonnie asked seriously. Kol scoffed and she stepped closer. "Kol, were you scared of them?"

Kol's eyes turned very cold. "Anyone living who takes that much pleasure in spilled blood is not to be trifled with."

Bonnie nodded. "I'll be careful."

This seemed to relax him a little, but he was still on edge as he led her through the maze that was New Orleans streets. Bonnie was beginning to hate silence from Kol; he gave everything away when he was talking, very much like his older half-brother, but when he was quiet his face became the spitting image of Elijah's: stoic and closed-off, impossible to read.

"I know Rebekah is your favorite sibling," she said conversationally. Kol's head turned just a fraction, but he was listening. "But which is your favorite brother?"

Kol exhaled sharply and shook his head, then nudged her shoulder to get her to turn right at another crossroads. The cemetery loomed large in the distance. "I suppose it would be cheating to pick the one who died when he was eleven. Never had much of chance to irritate, did Henrik."

"They're your brothers. Pick whichever you like."

He glanced sidelong at her, then forward, his face twisting up as he considered. After a long pause, he chose. "My eldest brother. Finn. He tried to have me killed. He was obnoxiously self-righteous and had a victim complex that would put your Elena to shame, but he was _good._ And he was mine. I'm sure you've heard that 'always and forever' rot from Nik or Rebekah or Elijah. It was hard, being on the outside of that. All I had was Finn.

"He understood what it was like, being completely cut off from your magic. Elijah never showed much passion for learning and Rebekah only the odd spell here or there. Niklaus' werewolf genes completely overrode his magical side; he had no talent for it. That's probably what gave him away to Father, come to think. But Finn and I would sit at our mother's feet and watch avidly as she summoned fire and lightning in the palm of her hand. He was the only one who would practice with me."

Bonnie listened quietly as Kol's voice grew softer and sadder. "When it was over and it was gone and my sister had left with Klaus and Elijah I went rampaging across the countryside. Finn came for me, the only one, and beat me into the ground. Then he dragged me home and cleaned me up and promised to stay by my side. When the hunters tried to kill us all and Nik decided to leave Finn sleeping…" He took a deep, shuddering breath. "Finn had always been sure to remind Nik when he was being the petulant whiny brat he was so very capable of being and Nik hated him for that. The idea that I loved one more than the other, even if Klaus had Elijah and Bekah's devotion so completely, was more than he could stand."

They stepped inside the cemetery, a veil of cold coming down on Bonnie's shoulders. She had met Finn when she tried to help Esther destroy the Originals and found him disturbingly remote, especially compared to his younger brothers and sister. Nine hundred years trapped inside a box would probably do that to someone.

"And now he's dead," Kol said, his voice turning flippant but his eyes still so serious. "So that's all rather pointless anyway. Your real question was Elijah or Niklaus, wasn't it? It's Elijah. His disapproval is a constant in my life and it makes me feel at home. And here we are." He gestured with a flourish at the large mausoleum they had stopped in front of and Bonnie, still recovering from the whiplash of his mood swings, shook her head at the ridiculousness of witches in dead people's houses.

The Tremes did not have any magical ward on their door, most likely because it was located in a cemetery. Bonnie opened it slowly and stepped inside, then immediately tried to back out, bumping into Kol.

"What is that?" she asked, nearly panting. "What is that?"

Kol's hands came up to grasp her upper arms. "Steady, love. What is what?"

Bonnie gazed wide-eyed down the long corridor in front of her, trying hard not to shake. Kol said she wouldn't be able to see it, but she could _feel_ it. "It's like it's crawling up my spine. It's like screaming." Neither of those descriptors made any sense but Kol rubbed his hands up and down her arms reassuringly then moved her to the side so he could lead. Bonnie hated herself for being so weak but couldn't deny she felt a little safer this way.

"How peculiar," Kol said as they walked slowly down the hall. "That at the Algiers' you felt nothing but here you're all aflutter."

"You don't feel it?"

"Oh, I feel it, but what I am to be afraid of? There's nothing here that can kill me."

"How nice for you."

"Relax, little witch. I won't let anything hurt you," he promised. The corridor branched into three separate paths and Kol took the left without hesitation. Eventually it opened up to a low-ceilinged room lined with coffins that seemed to go on for ages. Bonnie could hear the people inside whispering to her.

"I hate this place," she muttered over and over. "I hate it, I hate it."

Kol glanced back at her, amusement morphing into something akin to worry at her skittishness. "What is the matter with you?"

"It's not right," Bonnie said with an insistence she didn't know she had before she said the word. "It's not…"

"Natural?" Kol guessed, then sighed. "Yes, I suppose to a witch who devoted herself to nature magic this would all be very disturbing. Buck up, darling, and get used to it."

His manner was blunt but effective. Bonnie took a deep breath and steeled herself. "So what is this? There's no books."

"Ancestral magic," Kol responded. He began tapping on the coffins, one by one. "They don't need books. They've got spirits in their head telling them where to go."

Bonnie shivered. "So what are we doing here, then?"

"Their grimoire," Kol replied as if it was obvious. Bonnie took a step forward, suddenly excited. "They do not keep theirs near as guarded as the Algiers'. Like I said, they don't need books. But I don't know…"

He kept tapping away and Bonnie watched him. _Spirits in their head telling them where to go,_ he said. The whispering all around her flared up, grew louder, and Bonnie closed her eyes.

It would probably drive the average non-Treme witch insane, but Bonnie had spent nearly half a year with enraged vengeful ancestral witches inside her head, pushing her this way and that, always muttering and hissing. She was never alone. This was like coming back to a familiar if unpleasant home, and she let her muscles relax and her bones settle as she _listened._

After what seemed like an eternity she became aware of a warmth in this cold place they were standing in, calling her in to come enjoy its comfort. She almost gave in, but remembering the Algiers' brazier, she kept listening. The room got colder and colder, the warmth becoming more inviting every second.

"Little witch?" Kol called from what seemed like very far away. "Bonnie!"

There was a circle of ice, black and repellent, somewhere to her left. There was her goal. She took one step, then another, but it was so cold. Bonnie's body began to shake, almost breaking her out of her concentration, but she kept moving. One more step, losing feeling in her toes and fingers, her lips. One more step, feeling her tears freeze on her face when she hadn't even known she'd shed them. One more step.

She raised her hands, placed them flat against a coffin, and opened her eyes. It was difficult; her eyelashes had frozen with her tears and become stuck together. Her hands were the whitest she'd ever seen them up against the wood and she felt like she'd been under a frozen lake for a long time. Kol's hands were on her shoulders.

"This is it?" he asked, and when she managed to nod he reached forward, tapped the wood hard enough to leave a mark, then picked her up underneath her knees and arms and the world blurred.

He took her to another room, still lined with coffins but silent and outfitted with couches and a fireplace. Kol placed her gently on a chair then went zipping about, gathering papers and logs left aside and placing them in the fireplace. He stopped, holding a bit of paper in front of her. "Can you light it?"

She nodded and mumbled the spell through frozen lips. The flame was weak but sufficient and Kol had the pile ignited and burning in an instant. He grabbed the arms of Bonnie's chair, dragged it and her towards the fire, and leaned over her.

"Do not move, do you hear me? You stay here by the fire. You-" He cut himself off, looking down and shaking his head, and distantly Bonnie realized that she'd frightened him again. Then Kol was gone. In the distance she could hear the sound of wood breaking and a smothered yell, and the next second he had returned with a red leather-bound book, about the size of the average paper-back in her day, in his very blistered hand.

The ice water running through Bonnie's veins was slowly draining away, but the feeling coming back into her extremities was almost as painful as losing it was. With Kol in front of her she clumsily slid out of the chair and closer to the fire, curling up against one side of the mantle.

"Your hand?" she croaked.

Kol looked down at it, shrugging. "Nothing I can't handle. What was that?"

"I listened," Bonnie managed. "To the spirits. They told me where to go."

Kol knelt beside her, hand reaching out and stopping just short of her cheek when Bonnie flinched away a little. "Seems the Treme witches had a contingency plan for witches like you. You foolish girl."

"I got the grimoire, didn't I?" Bonnie asked. "I won."

Kol's eyes gleamed. "Yes, you did. Were you afraid?"

Bonnie looked away.

* * *

"Why are you here?" Stefan asked, when he found Kai and Liv in his living room, Kai holding the ascendant with one hand and his sister's left hand in the other. Then he shook himself, holding up a hand. "Never mind. You can't be here."

"We're just doing a little spell, Stef," Kai said calmly. "We're gonna check on Bon-Bon."

Stefan had looked ready to protest at the first part of Kai's statement, but now he stepped forward, interested. "Why do you need to check on her? Damon said she should be back any day now."

"Well, 'any day now' has gone on for the past two weeks," Kai said mutinously.

Liv smiled reassuringly at Stefan. "We're just going to make sure nothing's happened to her."

Her words had the opposite of the intended effect. Stefan marched forward, his permanently furrowed brow coming down even more sharply over his eyes. "Nothing's happened? What could happen? Jeremy said she wasn't going to try anything again."

The thought of Bonnie trying to commit suicide again hadn't actually crossed Kai's mind, even though that now seemed like the most obvious answer to why Bonnie was now three weeks overdue. Liv saw both men look at each other, starting to panic, and rolled her eyes.

"Oh, come on, do you not know her at all? Bonnie only did that when she had been alone for months." Here Kai received a very pointed glare. "Now that she has hope, she's not going to give up. We're making sure that Bonnie has everything she needs, that she can do the spell."

"Right," Stefan said, visibly relaxing. "Bonnie's strong. She'll be fine. Are you-" Whatever he was going to say was drowned out by the blaring of his ring tone. He fished it out of his back pocket and answered. Kai could hear Elena Gilbert's tinny, anxious voice on the other end and smiled sardonically as Stefan's eyes widened comically. "I'll be there," he said into the receiver before shoving the phone back into his pocket.

"Problems in paradise?" Kai quipped. Stefan glared at him and walked to the couch, picking up his hoodie from where he had thrown it over the back.

"It's Caroline," he answered. Kai sensed it was more from the need to talk to somebody than actually wanting to confide in him or Liv. "She's set down these rules for her humanity switch, but now she wants to go to this rave…" Stefan stopped, a little lost, his head no doubt buzzing with the million things that could go wrong, then he snapped out of it, looking at the two of them. "If anything's wrong with Bonnie, come find me or Elena or Damon, got it?"

Then, without waiting for them to respond, he left.

"A hundred and fifty years old and he still loses his mind over a girl," Kai said, shaking his head in mock disapproval. He turned back fully to his sister and gripped her hand tighter in his. Technically, contact wasn't necessary, but there was no way he was going to let her lose him in this spell. "You ready?"

Liv nodded and closed her eyes. Kai followed suit, beginning to chant. " _Phasmatos tribum invocio caveum, miscero mundio. Phasmatos tribum invocio caveum, miscero mundio."_

He felt more than heard Liv echo his words and the world behind his eyelids exploded into white before darkening again. He opened them and found himself in the Salvatore boarding house, May 10, 1994.

Liv opened her eyes and moment later and looked around, dropping his hand but remaining close. "This is it. Wow. They haven't changed their furniture in eighteen years."

"Vampire taste. Both enduring and dismal," Kai remarked. As a test, he made a grab at one of Damon's many, many glass decanters that was sitting on the table behind the couch. His skin made contact with the glass, but he couldn't feel the temperature or texture of it. "We can touch things. Awesome. Try not to stab me this time, okay?"

Liv smirked. "No promises, big brother."

Kai hoped she was joking. He let go of the decanter, pocketed the ascendant, and began walking around the house. "Bonnie?" he called out. They listened to it echo off the walls and Kai's heart dropped. "Bonnie?"

"God, it's so quiet," Liv whispered. "I can't hear myself think over it."

"That's not it," Kai said slowly. "You can hear yourself think too well. The thoughts are too loud."

He could see Liv start and stare at him out of the corner of his eyes, but if there was one line of conversation he did not want to pursue, this was it. He was done with the prison world, he was free. This was just a temporary excursion and that was all. Something like claustrophobia was treading quietly on the outskirts of his mind but Kai pushed it away. He was fine. He was free.

He took a deep breath. " _BONNIE!_ " Liv cringed briefly but straightened at the resounding silence that met them.

Kai thought something dim and unhelpful like _please, no_ and then he was tearing up the stairs, stalking down the hall, opening door after door and calling her name loudly enough to hear over the sound of his heart pounded in his ears. Liv chased after him, repeating his name and telling him to _chill, Kai!_ They reached Bonnie's bedroom and she ran into his back with a 'thwack' when he stopped dead.

There was Bonnie's bed, always so neatly made up, the knickknacks she had collected over her nine months stay crowding the bedside table. There was Damon's bed shoved in the darkest corner of the room. Here was her vanity with its mishmash of makeup she filched from the boutique downtown. Here was her grandmother's grimoire, sitting on the chair of her desk.

All covered in an untouched, fine layer of dust.

It took Liv a while to see what Kai's was seeing in that empty room, but she reached out and grabbed at his arm. "Maybe she's still traveling, Kai. Maybe something went wrong with the car. Maybe she stopped along the way for something else. You're jumping to the worst conclusion, and I'm telling you, _this is Bonnie._ She's fine, Kai."

"Okay," Kai responded, his voice sounding very far away even to his own ears. He slid a finger across her vanity, watched the dust come away. His heartbeat was slowing down, almost becoming sluggish, and his body felt like lead.

"We could do a spell," Liv suggested. "A locator spell."

Kai doubted it. They were here because of magic, and spells inside of spells were dangerously unreliable. At the same time, however, his prison world had been designed to allow magical to flow freely, even if the world was a giant spell itself. He picked up the grimoire. "Worth a try. There's a map downstairs."

The map was still marked with the jagged line of Kai's blood from Bonnie finding the ascendant the first time. Kai rubbed the spot on his chest where she had placed her hand uncomfortably and used the steak knife still set beside the map to prick his finger. One drop of blood he smeared on the cover of the grimoire and the rest he squeezed out onto the map. " _Permisso laca tha tar. Permisso laca tha tar."_

He repeated the spell over and over, but the drop of blood did not move. Beside him, he heard Liv's breath hitch. "Come on," he pleaded. "Move. Don't do this, come on."

He thought of Bonnie. Black hair, green eyes, the widest, brightest smile he'd ever seen the one chance he'd been lucky enough to see it. Brave and scared and better than him. The prettiest, loneliest girl in the world. But still the blood did not move.

Kai let out a roar and swept his hand across the table, scattering everything across it onto the floor. The windows behind him cracked and shuttered in their frames and Liv skittered around to the other side of the desk, watching him with wide eyes and raised hands.

"Calm down," she ordered. "We're not done yet. She's fine. Just – find me a candle."

Kai glared at her, caught in the eye of a storm of emotions and rooted to the spot. The house had been empty for months and she couldn't be found. Damon kept saying that nothing could happen to her, but a thousand possibilities flooded Kai's mind. She drove into a storm, lost control of the car and died in the bottom of a ditch. Alone. Qetsiyah's magic overwhelmed her and she overextended her magic and died in Nova Scotia. Alone. The spell didn't work and Bonnie gave in, slit her wrists and bled out in some random hotel bathroom. Alone.

"Kai!" Liv snapped, putting some magic in her command. "Find me a candle, now."

His sister's voice propelled him to action and he moved to the dining room, tugging one of the candles off the candelabras that sat on the table. He returned to Liv silently, handed her the candle, and watched her light it and close her eyes.

" _Phesmatos Physium Calva,"_ she whispered, clenching her eyes tight. "Come on. _Phesmatos Physium Calva."_

It was a spell to link the visions of witches. Jo used to practice it on him whenever he would go get himself lost in the woods behind their house, trying to escape their father. Kai held his breath, watching Liv mutter the spell repeatedly, brow growing more and more furrowed. She reached out a hand blindly for him and he took it, closing his eyes and echoing her words and thinking of that smile.

There was nothing but cold. Kai could feel it seeping into his bones, making his teeth chatter. His vision was black as night, but he could feel his body edging closer and closer to the warmth Olivia and the candle gave off. He felt as if his thoughts were freezing inside his brain.

Liv released his hand and grabbed his upper arm, shaking him. "Malachai!"

His brain moved slowly but he focused on the warmth of his sister's hand to bring him back, opening his eyes to her worried frown.

"You're shaking," she informed him. "And your lips are turning blue. What was that? Did you see anything?"

"N-no," Kai said. "I was cold. It was dark and I was cold. _She_ was cold."

Liv stared back at him, eyes wide. "I didn't feel anything like that. Is Bonnie…I mean…" She drifted off, clearly not wanting to finish the thought, which Kai internally thanked her for. "We need to get you back. Take you to Jo."

Kai shook his head furiously. "We're finding Damon. His BFF is in danger and this time, he's going to do something or I'm going – vampires can't regrow limbs, right?"

"Jo first, then Damon," Liv said insistently. "I'm only okay if you are, remember? You're not okay." Kai opened her mouth to tell her where she could shove her commands, then closed it. Security was just about the only thing he could give his little sister, and when he considered all the things he had taken away…Kai shook his head. He was so tired.

He closed his eyes, grasped the ascendant, and cancelled the original spell. Back in the 2013 boarding house, hideous furniture still included, he stumbled over to the couch, ignited the fire, and pulled out his phone, dialing. "Hey, Sissy. So, funny story, but I might have hypothermia in the middle of May. Please come fix me. I'm at the boarding house. Bring soup."


	6. We're The Kings Of Imagining Things

Thank you so much for the outpouring of love, but I want to correct myself from the last chapter. I would never like, hold this fanfic ransom for reviews. That wasn't what was happening. I just needed some feedback, which I got, so thank you so so much.

This chapter was absolutely killer to write, but I hope you can't tell. We're almost over the hump, though, so that's nice.

Songs for this chapter are "Undiscovered Colors" by Flashbulb and "The Long Haul" by No.

* * *

Chapter 6: We're The Kings of Imagining Things

* * *

The task of reading the grimoire, in the end, actually went to Kol. Though her basic understanding of Latin allowed Bonnie to understand some words, the book was written entirely in French, a language she didn't speak. Bonnie sat as close to the fire as she could, listening to the faded whispers of the mausoleum, and waited.

"I think this was actually written by a very adept French chicken," Kol complained, turning the grimoire this way and that, then shrugging his shoulders and seemingly giving up. "Of course the Tremes were made up nearly entirely of freed slaves following the whispers of long-dead voo-doo queens. I suppose I should be impressed they could write at all."

"Actual voo-doo queens?"

Kol glanced up at her. "Oh, yes. Ancient tribal magic rubbed raw under the yoke of slavery. Voo-doo is built entirely on vengeance. It's seriously wicked stuff, love."

"You sound so impressed," Bonnie remarked. Kol grinned wildly.

"You don't understand because you've never been part of a coven. To watch these women and men in action was to watch humans wrest power from gods. I once witnessed them cast a plague that would've put your Bible's to shame. It was incredible."

"But that's not right," Bonnie argued. "Magic shouldn't be used to play God. It should keep the balance."

"Shouldn't it? That's rather rich coming from the girl who brought her boyfriend back from the dead," Kol pointed out, smug. Bonnie's face fell, conceding his point, and he sighed, closing the grimoire around one finger to keep his place and sliding gracefully off his chair to come to a crouch beside her at the fire. "Bonnie, love, would you have changed what you did? If you could go back?"

It was a question Bonnie had only ever had to ask herself once before. Her Jeremy was going to grow up, have a life and a family, the things he'd always wanted to have but was too scared of losing to reach out and take because of what she did. "No."

"That coven that cast a plague only did so because of the noblemen of the city were kidnapping and raping little girls and boys, sometimes even killing them, and the police weren't lifting a finger because the children were slaves. If there is a god, he wasn't listening to their screams. Or worse, he didn't care," Kol said quietly. "Elijah and I tried to do what we could, but it was the witches who saw justice done in the end. You saved Jeremy because you knew it was wrong he was dead. The witches cursed the noblemen because they knew it was wrong for them to go free."

"It's easy to play judge, jury, and executioner when you've got an entire coven to spread the parts around," Bonnie protested. "I'm just me. Alone."

Kol sighed and stood, returning to his chair. "Yes, well, Bennetts have never been very good at belonging. They don't need to. They lead."

Bonnie and he held each other's gazes for a moment, and she wondered if she looked like one of her ancestors to him. One of those women he had called powerful and accomplished, that he admired. Or if she looked exactly as she was: a frightened, lost nineteen year old girl playing the longest game of pretend that had ever been played.

She broke first, looking away and curling in on herself, rubbing her hands along her arms and legs to warm them up. She buried her face into her hands and closed her eyes, trying to block out the soft voices that echoed along the halls. Trying to block out everything, really. Bonnie thought she would go mad from the wanting that filled her. She wanted to go home and see her friends; she wanted her friends to come save her for once. She wanted to be powerful enough to crack this world in two; she wanted to go back to when she wasn't aware of magic at all. She wanted to not be scared anymore.

She wanted for nothing to be wanted of her. To just be Bonnie, and be good enough.

"Do you think your brothers and sister would come for you? If they knew?" she asked, raising her head to look at the Original

Kol flicked to another page but from the way his eyes stopped moving she knew he was considering it. He shook his head. "Niklaus would never risk it in a million years, Elijah would think it was a trap, and Rebekah wouldn't go alone."

"My friends aren't coming for me," Bonnie said. "And I knew that. But I am very good at hoping."

"Well, it does spring eternal, as the poet says," Kol said dryly.

Bonnie cast him a sardonic glance. "It also breeds eternal misery, _as the poet says."_

"Hopeful _and_ pessimistic, aren't we a paradox?"

"No one's going to find us. We have to save ourselves," Bonnie said, ignoring him. "Just you and me. Well, you, me, and a bunch of whispers…" She trailed off, eyes going wide as what she just said sunk in.

"What?" Kol asked, noticing her expression. "What is it?"

Bonnie stood on shaky legs, walking unsteadily towards the door. Kol was in front of her in an instant, hands on her shoulders. "Use your words, little witch. You can't keep wandering off like this. _What is it_?"

"Those whispers," she told him, only half paying attention. "Where are they coming from?"

Kol leaned back, assessing her. "We've had this conversation, love. Magic from the real world is mimicked here."

"Magic that was already here. Spirits aren't attached to the earth, they go where they want. They can't be recreated, _they're spirits."_ Bonnie began to feel a bubble of excitement, growing larger and larger inside of her, and she raised her arms to clench her hands tight on Kol's elbows. "But the Other Side is gone, Kol. There are no spirits left. So where are the whispers coming from?"

Kol pushed down on her shoulders a little, like he was trying to anchor her. "New Orleans witches go to the Ancestral Plane. I've heard tale it's like the Other Side but not as lonely, or as endless."

"We can talk to them!" Bonnie said, excitement and the returning chill now that she was away from the fire making her words nearly unintelligible from her chattering teeth. "Look in the grimoire, there must be something to contact them-"

"No," Kol said immediately. The bubble inside Bonnie popped and her hands dropped away from his arms as she finally looked at him. His jaw was set, eyes like flint. "These aren't your friendly neighborhood ghost witches, Bonnie, they'll want something in return. Something you might not be able to give."

"I'll decide that," Bonnie said, throwing off his hands and looking around for the grimoire. She could practically hear the whispers calling her and she was eager to respond. Kol had left it on the chair by the fire but before she could take one step towards it, he blurred and reappeared four feet in front of her, book in hand. She huffed and held her hand out. "The book, Kol."

"This isn't just about you, love. It's only you and me, like you said. I can't lose you." Kol's tone was hard, the planes of his face harder, but his words still made her soften.

"You're not going to lose me. I know I haven't given you a lot of reasons to have faith in me, but I can do this," she promised him. "You've told me exactly what to expect. I won't give them anything."

"They won't give you a choice!" Kol snarled. "You are power, screaming into the void because you can't control it. Do you think they can't hear you? You were the only one who heard the whispers in that room, love. They're calling you."

Bonnie remembered the warmth she felt while searching for the grimoire, how entreating and welcoming it felt. Even now she could hear the voices become louder as if responding to her newfound motivation. This time, she could almost make out the words, if she just listened harder…

She shook herself, squeezing her fist so tight her nails cut into the palm, and focused on those tiny pinpricks of pain to keep her grounded. "This could be our chance, Kol. They could tell us what we need to know to get out of here."

"Not for free," Kol said savagely.

"Nothing in magic is free. I know that," Bonnie shot back. The voices swelled and her grip grew tighter. "Probably better than anyone. But what wouldn't you give to go home?"

"I wouldn't risk my life, but then again I don't have the years of experience being a martyr that you do," Kol spat. "You have found an easy solution and now you want to take it. So like you to run headlong into situations you know nothing about."

"I made a mistake before. But you'll be right beside me. You said you wouldn't let anything hurt me-"

"Which is why we're not doing this. We're going to read through this grimoire to see if there's anything useful," Kol laid out, voice condescendingly patient. "And if there's nothing in here we'll try something else. Something that doesn't involve talking to the ancestors of sacrificial witches."

Bonnie gritted her teeth, fingers aching from the tightness of her fist and her body aching uncomfortably from the cold. She could feel her skin beginning to give. Kol tucked the grimoire into the back of his pants and stepped closer to her.

"Don't," she warned him. Her voice didn't sound like it belonged to her. "I will flay you alive."

"I wasn't-" he protested, looking shocked. "Bonnie, just think for a moment. This is dangerous."

"I want to go home," she cried. "I want to be safe."

Kol's eyes narrowed. "You're acting like a spoiled child. _I'll_ keep you safe, and we'll make it out, I swear-"

"If I do this, if I talk to them, they'll tell me what I need to know," Bonnie swore fervently. Kol cocked his head inquisitively, already narrowed eyes thinning to slits.

"How are you so sure, Bonnie?"

She could feel the whispers in her veins, creeping along like ice water. In her mind's eye she could see Elena and Caroline, smiling with arms outstretched to receive her and body hurt from the heaviness of her heart.

She felt hot slashes against her palm and Kol started, red veins appearing around his eyes and disappearing just as fast. "Your hand-"

She looked down from him, to her left hand, unclenching her fist. Her nails, long and ragged from months of neglect, came away red, four jagged half moons weeping blood from her palm. The world went curiously silent and slow as she watched one drop as it slid to the edge of her palm, balanced tremulously, and then fell.

It hit the ground, splashing in an odd, unnatural pattern, and the whispers swelled to a chorus so loud Bonnie did clap her hands to her ears. Kol's eyes were as wide as could be and she realized he could finally hear them as well. The sound of wind began to build in the mausoleum from and he grabbed at her arm.

"We have to go. Now!"

His hand slid down to grab her slippery palm in his and he tugged her to him, then the world became streaks of colors until several second later, Bonnie was deposited unceremoniously onto the hard cement of the curb in a foreign part of town.

The whispers were gone, the cold receded as well, but Bonnie had never felt so numb, staring down at the blood on her hands.

Kol was in the middle of the street, staring up at the sun. "Fool me twice," he said, attempting to chuckle but instead sounding choked.

The solution was right there in front of them. Ask the ancestors, learn the answer, go home. But it hadn't been really been her thoughts, not entirely. She let herself be controlled again. She was scared and weak and utterly pathetic.

 _Stay strong,_ Grams had told her, and she had. She had lived and fought to go back home. But now her friends were farther away than ever and it was too much. Bonnie didn't know what she was doing or how she was going to save herself and Kol. She didn't know the magics she was dealing with. She didn't even know her own magic.

She was lost. Utterly and completely lost.

She was crying before she could really stop herself, quiet sobs that hurt from how they made her body shake. Part of it was grief; between taking care of Damon, making sure Kai didn't get out, and feeling sorry for herself, Bonnie really hadn't let herself feel how much she missed her friends. Part of it was frustration at her failures. But most of it was the reason a child first learns to cry: so that someone would find them and give them comfort.

She felt palms on either side of her knees and looked into Kol's guarded eyes, level with hers as he crouched in front of her. Bonnie wiped furiously at her face, only remembering when her face was semi-clean that one of her hands, and now her cheek, was completely bloody, but Kol seemed unfazed.

"I'm so sorry," she told him in a whisper, and he nodded.

"You can't keep doing this, love. You don't have the luxury of being weak. I won't lie and tell you that everything is going to be alright, and I need you to be strong in spite of that. We are playing a dangerous game, and if I am to keep playing my part I need you to do the same." Kol leaned forward onto his knees, hands leaving her knees to retrieve a handkerchief from his pocket, so mundane and proper that Bonnie giggled ungracefully around her tears. Kol managed a small smile, reaching slowly and carefully for her injured hand. Bonnie let him take it and he began wrapping the cloth around it.

"I need you," he said gruffly as he worked. "Which doesn't really make me happy, but there it is. Life is-"

"-Hard, and then I'll die?" Bonnie finished for him expectantly. "I just thought, maybe, since I've died twice, life would give me a break, just this once."

Kol tied the two ends in a tight knot and looked up, smiling tightly at her. "No such luck, I'm afraid."

Bonnie nodded, pulling her hand away from his, feeling the tiredness straight through to her soul. "I'm sorry," she told him again.

"I accept your apology," Kol said, standing up and holding out a hand to help her, which she took gratefully, legs still wobbly. "We've had your trauma for the day and are still three hours away from mine. Shall we find some food?" Bonnie took a deep breath and nodded and he began leading the way. "Now don't touch anything, alright, darling? With your luck, the next time you pick up an apple it'll be a magical fruit grenade and you'll blow us both to bits."

He was joking – probably – but she followed him along meekly to the open markets just off the main thoroughfare. Kol handed her a kebab and a banana with a sarcastic smile and took a pear to munch on for himself.

The handkerchief made for clumsy eating but Bonnie managed, idly chewing while she looked around. New Orleans was beautiful, every inch of it. The wind had picked up and she longed for a ponytail as she kept brushing her hair out of her face to read the inscription on the bottom of one of the statues that seemed to dot every corner. It was, of course, in French, and she straightened with a huff.

"I have an idea, little witch," Kol called from by the fruit carts. He had picked up another pear and two apples and was now juggling them, managing to look coordinated instead of clownish. "We should start practicing your magic."

"Sorry?"

"Your magic," Kol repeated slowly, glancing at her dubiously. "You've done the occasional spell but you haven't really flexed your muscle. You've got to take control, Bonnie."

"Because my magic's cooperated so well with me so far," Bonnie said sarcastically.

Kol sighed, catching the apples in one hand and the pear in the other. "You're right, you know. You're much better at hoping. This eternal pessimism suits you ill, poppet. Have you considered my words at all? You're wearing another witch's skin."

"So I should, what, cannibalize it?" Bonnie said, screwing up her face in disgust. Kol laughed.

"To put it indelicately. Look, if you go on at this rate you're going to get yourself killed. You've got to-"

"Take control, I got it," Bonnie said irritatedly, rubbing her temples. "I just – I don't know what to do."

Kol set the fruit down and began walking towards her. "Lucky you've got me, then. I had proper training, you know, not a slapdash grimoire speed-read while my ancestors pestered my every move. We start with basics and work our way up."

"Basics?" Bonnie said, one eyebrow raised.

Kol scoffed. "Of course the American doesn't know the value of a solid foundation." When she still looked undecided, he adopted a pleading expression. "Come now, darling, take pity on a poor man. I haven't been around magic that isn't trying to kill me in centuries."

Bonnie bit back a grin. She'd never had a proper teacher; her Grams had died too early and Shane had just been trying to manipulate her. Her friends never put much thought into Bonnie's magic. They just pointed her at a target and waited for her to start chanting Latin. The last time she'd gotten to really talk about magic was with Liv Parker, who'd tried to steal her boyfriend.

"Okay," she said finally.

Kol clapped his hands, grin only growing wider at her ensuing glare. "Excellent. Now, first things first –"

"What, now?"

"No time like the present, love. We'll start with protection spells. If something happens to me, I need to know you'll be alright. So-" he blurred and then reappeared, holding a handful of fruit. "I am going to throw these at you and you are going to stop them."

" _What?_ " Bonnie shrieked, stepping away from him. "Hell, no!"

"Relax, I'll be gentle. Now, walk along this road until I tell you to turn." And then he was gone, laughter ghosting around her. She spun around on her heel, trying to spot where he might have gone, but he was fast enough and clever enough to stay hidden.

"This is your idea of basics?" she yelled. "I won't even be able to see them coming. This is stupid."

"You know you're in danger, love," he called back, his voice moving from this building to that one, impossible to track. "If you were surrounded by vampires, what would you do?"

He had the grace, at least, to give her a moment to think. If she was surrounded by vampires…there was a protection spell that was easy to maintain and could be sustained near-constantly. If she was surrounded by vampires, she would cast that spell and strengthen it the instant she expected an attack.

" _Otum adnarvet esnavit atim,"_ she muttered under her breath, feeling the barrier creeping up around her like a second skin. When she felt it come together at the top of her head she began walking.

The first throw hit her square in the center of her back. True to his word, the toss was fairly gentle, but the impact still had her hissing from the sting.

"We'll work on healing spells next," Kol called from a high vantage point.

The second she anticipated a second too late, but the impact was diminished. It was difficult to expand the spell outwards, she found. She had to push the defensive energy into a sort of modified _motus,_ and it all happened a bit too fast for her brain to catch up.

While she concentrated the third apple pegged her dead in the thigh and Bonnie stumbled, wincing. This wasn't training, this was annoying. Why did she ever agree to this?

 _C'mon, Bon, you're getting angry. He's tossing freaking apples at you, you've got the power here,_ she berated herself. It was how she had faced off against countless vampires. If they touched her, they won, but until then it was Bonnie's game.

 _It's Klaus, rushing at you, and you've got one shot._

She closed her eyes and heard the whistle of an object soaring through the air and then halting. She turned to see the apple falling to the ground, four feet away from her. "Ha!"

Somewhere, Kol golf-clapped politely. "Yes, very impressive. Keep walking, and take the next right."

This followed down that street, and then the next. She didn't stop every one; she had grown unused to the strain of maintaining a spell, even a minor one, and her barrier began to waver. But she was almost having fun. It was exhilarating, feeling her magic respond to her will, and it was nice to just be dodging flying fruit. No vampires, no pointy projectiles. Just practice, to make her better and stronger.

"Did you do this in your day?" she called out. "What did you use, pinecones?"

"And they were on fire!" Kol responded jovially. Bonnie laughed quietly, sending her magic out to fix weak points in her boundary spell, and then she heard it.

 _Tick tick tick._

"Kol?" she yelled.

 _Tick tick tick._

She whirled around, trying to discern where it was coming from. An apple came flying out of nowhere and she turned to face it, catching it in one hand. "Kol, what is that?"

A _whoosh_ and Kol was in front of her, looking alert. "I cannot deal with you hearing things again, little witch." But when she didn't respond, letting the silence fall between them, he began to frown.

 _Tick tick tick tick tick tick._

"It sounds like a clock…" Kol said slowly. "There's a timepiece store two streets over but you shouldn't be able to hear it from here."

He began to walk in the opposite direction they had been headed, and she followed close behind, the ticking noise growing louder and louder until she could discern individual noises, separate from each other, like a hundred clocks going at once.

They round a corner to a street lined with little stores, the clicking now unbearably loud. Albert's Fine Watchworks was a modest establishment, with only a small window to display some of his goods set into the wall. Three pendulum clocks, their hands spinning wildly around the face, ticking away.

The door wasn't locked when Kol tried it and she followed him in. "Has this ever happened before?" she yelled over the noise. There must have been fifty pendulum clocks, ten huge grandfathers lining the back, and cases and cases of pocket watches strewn about the store. The minute and hours hands of all of them were spinning, some fast and some slowly, some even backwards.

"No," Kol replied, looking almost frightened. "They're not even supposed to be this loud. I don't…"

He reached out and touched the nearest one and all at once the ticking began to slow inexorably, as if the gears were suddenly coated in molasses. It sounded, almost, like it was counting down. "We should leave," she said. When Kol didn't budge, she tugged on his arm. "C'mon, Kol."

"They're just clocks," he said, almost dreamily. "What harm can they do?"

The ticking grew slower, then slower still, and chills creeped up Bonnie's spine. She moved closer to Kol, almost touching him, and slowly expanded her protection spell to cover him as well. He didn't even notice, too entranced by watching the clock in front of him slowly tick towards twelve o'clock.

 _Tick…tick…_ Bonnie held her breath. _Tick…tick_

… _tock._

 _Now,_ she thought, and pushed out with all her might.

All around them the clocks began to chime unnaturally loud, the grandfathers in the back shaking from the sound and every inch of glass in the room exploded. Kol yelled, rounding on her and seizing her close, lowering them both to the ground, but not a shard of glass touched them, bouncing off an invisible barrier a foot from Kol's back.

The sound seemed to go on forever, so loud she gave in a pressed her head further into Kol's chest to block it out. The glass had settled but she was afraid to release the spell as long as the sound went on. It began to drain her, the familiar feeling of pressure building in her head, but just as it reached its peak the sound stopped utterly. No chimes, not even the softest ticking.

Kol waited a few seconds longer and the cautiously raised his torso up to look around. Bonnie scuttled away from him, sucking in air. "What-?" she managed.

Kol shook his head, standing and then helping her up. The store was a disaster, glass strewn everywhere, several of the clocks toppled over and more than one display case leaning precariously on lost legs. The clocks remaining on the wall had all stopped at one time, and Bonnie went cold as she read the time.

"Twelve twenty-eight," Kol whispered, looking around. "What happens at twelve twenty-eight?"

Bonnie closed her eyes, forced herself to breath. 12:28 PM. The exact time of the solar eclipse in the prison world she thought she had escaped.

* * *

Bonnie ran her finger over the smooth brass of the pocket watch she had filched from one of the broken display cases before sliding it to the small button at the top and pressing down. The hands of the clock hadn't moved in two hours, no matter how many times she winded it. Twelve twenty-eight.

She should tell Kol. She knew she should and yet every time she opened her mouth, the words wouldn't come. Their experience at Albert's had him more on edge than she'd ever seen him, and as 8:47 drew closer and closer he only grew more tense. She had never seen the planes of his face so severe, and her own neck ached in empathic sympathy at the rigidness of his own.

There was no practice now. They stayed close to each other as they walked down the empty streets of New Orleans, Bonnie nearly walking sideways to watch their backs. It seemed every time the wind blew Kol vamped out and she reactivated the barrier spell, but nothing came of it.

They reached a crossroads, and Bonnie sighed as Kol examined every road with narrow eyes. "It's meant for me."

Kol stopped and turned to her. "What is?"

"The time. The message," Bonnie said, showing him the pocket watch. "The Gemini Coven used reoccurring celestial events to give their prison world power. In 1994, it was an eclipse, and it happened at 12:28 PM. It was the only time the spell to leave could work."

Kol glanced from the watch back to her. "Maybe something followed you?"

"Or maybe something found me," Bonnie answered, remembering her blood on the floor of the Treme haven. Kai's prison world had been a lonely, quiet place, but it was just that. Kol's was full of dark and darker things. Things that could make even a demon afraid. She looked down at the frozen hands and felt a dreadful certainty fill her. She was never going to make it out intact.

"We'll…" Kol tried. His voice was soft and broken, and he was just as lost as she was. "We'll sort it out, sweetheart. You'll see. We're going home."

His hand reached out to hers, covered it, and pushed on her fingers with his until the pocket watch closed with a snap. She took a deep breath and looked up at him, nodding sharply, and slid it into her coat pocket.

The clock tower, far away, began to chime and Bonnie jumped, barrier firing to life only to fizzle out when Kol shook his head and turned, walking with purpose. "It's time, Bonnie," he called back to her. "September 28, 1821. I hope you like Shakespeare."

She hurried after him, keeping close, as he led her down one street then the other, only to stop dead when they came upon the first of many brightly burning streetlamps. They started in the middle of the street, one light dark and the next bright with flame. Kol slowed but didn't stop, watching her wonder with wary eyes.

"Do me a favor, love."

"Depends," she responded, touching one of the lamp posts, feeling the slightest hum of magic.

"Look at me."

She complied out of sheer confusion, turning to stare at him. "Why?"

Kol returned her gaze evenly, as if memorizing her face, then smirked. "Just wanted to see if you would. You're very biddable."

"And you're an ass."

"One who's growing late for his own hell. Let's anon."

They resumed their trek, but it was slower this time. Lights began to fill the air, nebulous and small at first but growing in size and intensity the further they walked. Bonnie reached out to touch one only to watch her hand go right through one side and the other, tingling unpleasantly.

The music started, a single mournful violin that the lights seemed to dance to in the wind. It was beautiful, and terrifying. Kol stared straight ahead as they marched on, but Bonnie was constantly turning, wanting to take in as much as she could.

Two of the lights had grown to a height and width only marginally smaller than Bonnie herself and they sunk lower and lower until they touched the ground and exploded in a shower of sparks. Bonnie leapt away, shielding her eyes. When the light dimmed and she lowered her hand she watched, dumbfounded, as a man and woman walked passed her, holding hands and smiling.

The man was wearing garb similar to Kol's and the woman a beautiful dress of blue and green, and Bonnie could see straight through them. They talked to each other, but made no noise, and they didn't appear to notice the vampire and witch walking just behind them.

One by one the lights touched down. Two sullen-faced men, a girl whose garb suggested a less than savory occupation, a small urchin boy. More men and women, twenty at least, all walking along with them.

She turned to Kol, a million questions ready to fall on her lips, but he held up a hand to quiet her. "Give the dead their due, love. This is their final march."

They rounded a corner to find the _Le Grand_ Theatre lit all up in lights. It had seen better days even in 1821, but it's lights were cheery and its orchestra in tune. The violin had long since been joined by others: cellos and a piano and the clash of drums. The marquee was empty and no signs were hung in the windows but the ghosts all filed to through the closed doors without hesitation.

"Wait," Kol said when she made to follow. "You'll want to see it all."

She didn't have to wonder what he meant for long. A few minutes later, a ghostly Kol strolled up to the theatre, a small translucent black boy in tow.

"What are we doing here, Mr. Kol?" the boy asked. Bonnie started at hearing his voice, so thin and confused.

Ghost Kol simply smiled. "A treat, just for you. For all you've done for my family."

She looked to the real Kol, standing beside her. His eyes weren't on his ghostly counterpart but on the little boy, and she had never seen such hatred mixed with such sadness. "Marcellus," he murmured.

"Who is he?" she asked, hushed.

Kol didn't look away from him. "Just a boy. He was _just_ a boy."

The two spirits walked past them – through them – and into the theatre, and Bonnie made to follow but Kol remained stock-still, staring at the place Marcellus had left. On the street, the lamps began to go out, the farthest first then closer to them. The road grew darker and darker as the music swelled until finally only the lights of the marquee was left. They cast a shadow across Kol's face, the hollows of his eyes and under his cheekbones going dark. He tipped his head back, eyes closed, and breathed deeply through his nose, then turned sharply on his heel and crossed to the door, holding it open for her.

The lobby was beautiful if worn. Everything was threadbare red velvet and unpolished brass and it was so large, the size of her high school cafeteria twice over. Four sets of double doors were at the far end of the room, and two great staircases fanned out on either side. Kol led her to the left, pace fast enough that they caught up with his ghostly twin and the small boy in no time.

They followed the spirits into a private box close to the stage. There were only a few people, about seven of the twenty she had seen, in the audience though it could easily seat hundreds, but she suspected the rest were behind the closed red curtain.

Ghost Kol bade Marcellus to sit, then picked up a wine glass from the table of crystal left waiting for him. He bit into his wrist and squeezed the blood out into the glass then held it out to the boy.

"Drink," he ordered. The boy shied away, face full of fear.

"Mr. Kol, let's go home –"

"Marcellus," Kol said, leaning in close, voice going low. " _Drink."_

Compelled, Marcellus took the glass and gulped it down. Kol chuckled, seemingly satisfied, then turned to the theatre. He held up his hands and the music, coming from a pit so dark she couldn't see if there were people actually playing, stopped dead.

"Begin!" Kol said, clapping his hands. Instantly the people in the audience straightened as if in a trance and the curtain rose up and away. The lights of the stage flooded the dark theatre and Bonnie couldn't hold back her horrified gasp, cringing back into the wall of the box.

There were corpses strewn all over the stage. Some in the aisles in between the seats, wearing the clothes of the ghosts sitting in the audience. The poor girl Bonnie had seen earlier was lying over the front row of seats like a broken doll, wide eyes staring unseeing at the ceiling. The corpses were incredibly real and solid, and the ghosts walked right through them as they moved about stage.

"Why are they here?" she managed. The real Kol was leaning against the lip of the balcony, watching the play begin with a blank expression.

"They're always here," he answered. "Even when the spirits fade, they remain."

Bonnie had read Hamlet in high school and remembered it fairly well, but Kol had apparently decided to improve upon it. She watched as the actor playing the Ghost strangled the actor playing one of the sentries to death. Marcellus seemed unsure if it was real, but Bonnie's hand flew to her mouth as bile rose in her throat.

"You…what? You compelled them?" she asked Kol. The spirit of the sentry's actor fell to the ground where the corpse wearing his face lay. Kol watched with an almost clinical gaze, nodding.

" _Why?"_

Kol did not answer for a very long time. Hamlet entered and left, deceitful Claudius and Queen Gertrude afterwards. Ophelia, played by the young prostitute strewn over the chairs twenty feet from her ghost, wailed her worries.

It was only after Polonius was stabbed and killed by Hamlet, twitching as he fell into his corpse, that Marcellus seemed to realize what was happening. "Please let me go, Mr. Kol, I don't like this!"

"Don't be absurd!" the Original's spirit responded cheerfully. "Shakespeare should be experienced in the flesh! In truth, these aren't the finest actors, but we are in the colonies. Here! Where were we?" He rose and stood behind Marcellus' chair, holding the boy down by the shoulders.

Midway through the next scene an actor fumbled his line and Ghost Kol sighed, zipping away and reappearing in a blur down by the stage. "We went over this, darling. Hamlet, not harlot." Then he snapped the man's neck.

Bonnie felt the sound through her own body and crumpled into a chair next to Marcellus, looking over at the poor boy's face, covered in tears. Kol replaced the actor he had killed with a man from the audience, shoving a script into his hands, and blurred back to Marcellus' side. He was so small and so scared and her heart ached just to look at him. She reached out a hand and placed it over his. It went straight through but she let it rest there, hoping, however irrationally, that he could feel it.

"The boy is Marcellus," Kol finally elaborated. "My brother Klaus' ward. He'd grown rather attached to Elijah which, predictably, made Klaus rather jealous. Rebekah was daggered and he had yet to forgive her, so he woke me up so he could have someone to love him again."

She turned her wide-eyed gaze towards him. His returned look was so alien, so cold. He didn't even look like a person any more.

The play went on. Ophelia, tearing at her clothes and hair, climbed to the top of the catwalks and flung herself out, landing with a horrible thud and crack over the chairs where her body laid. The impact seemed enough to startle the lady in green and blue, sitting with her husband, out of her compulsion, and she began to scream. Ghost Kol sighed again, blurred, and another neck was snapped. Then five more as the audience began to flee. The actors on stage seemed to come out of their stupor but Kol turned and roared " _FINISH IT!"_

They fell quickly after that in the bloodbath that was Hamlet's finale. Horatio and Fortinbras, surrounded by bodies, took their bows to Ghost Kol's loud applause.

"Let's go congratulate them, shall we?" He asked Marcellus, taking the boy by the arm and leading him out of the box.

"Bonnie?" the real Kol asked her, so quietly she could barely hear him. Her face felt frozen in horror, her hands so tight around the arms of the chair she couldn't move them.

"It was fun for you," she accused him, her voice hoarse. "You compelled them to kill each other and you _applauded._ "

"Yes," Kol agreed readily. "I did horrible things and I liked it because I was a monster. I'm not my siblings; I won't blame it on lack of love, or too much of it. I did it because I was eight hundred years old and I was bored and I was numb."

"' _Was?'"_ Bonnie echoed derisively. "You think you're not a monster anymore?"

"There wasn't a need, not after this," Kol said, shrugging. "I found my purpose. We should get closer."

He headed out of the box and she followed numbly, out into the lobby and back into the theater, Ghost Kol on stage with Marcellus clapping the actors on the back.

"Marvelous job, truly," he was saying. His smirk was the same Kol had worn just an hour ago, the one that was so familiar to her and she could scarcely stand to look at him. She and Kol had gotten halfway to the stage when a voice burst out from behind her.

" _What are you doing?"_

Bonnie whirled just as a ghostly apparition raced through her, leaving her shaking. Elijah Mikaelson's echo raced up on stage, halting when Kol laughed.

"I'm introducing Marcellus to the theatre," his brother explained. "I thought you'd be pleased?"

Elijah was as angry as she'd ever seen him. "Is there no limit to your violent imagination, brother?"

Genuine confusion crossed Kol's face as he glanced down at Marcellus. "If the lad is going to be a vampire, he'll have to learn somehow, won't he? Come, I've already fed him my blood. All you have to do is snuff him, and voila. One of us. Well, that's what you and Nik want, isn't it? A new little brother? A better one? I'm trying to help, Elijah."

Elijah seems stuck somewhere between worry and horror. "Kol. Just –"

Ghost Kol heaved his dangerous sigh and tossed his hands in the air. "Look, I'll do it for you then. Horatio, good man, would you kindly run this boy through with your sword?"

"No!" Elijah snarled, but before the actor could even move his head was struck from his shoulders by an unseen force, Fortinbras soon following. Klaus slowed into view, tossing their heads aside.

"Oh, Nik, you're here-"

"Marcellus," Klaus said lowly, cutting off Kol. "Go wait in the lobby, there's a good lad. We'll be out shortly."

Marcellus raced off as fast as he could, his spirit dissipating before it reached the door. The real Kol walked slowly up the stairs onto the stage, drawing close to his brothers, staring with the closest thing to wonder she'd even seen on his face. She followed him up, nerves on edge at being so close to Klaus, even in an apparition's harmless form.

Ghost Kol, however, didn't seem to realize the danger he was in. "Alright, so we'll give him a few years. Being forever twelve would be rather awful. I admit my folly."

"You go too far," Elijah snarled.

"Too far?" Kol asked, incredulous. "He's fine! You two play at noble purposes but we all know the truth here. You're going to turn him one day, and you're going to show him horrors far worse than anything he saw tonight. For now he's pleasant and malleable because he's young and he loves you. But just wait until he grows up, Elijah. The moment he displeases Nik will be the last time you ever see him."

"Marcellus is _family,"_ Klaus said savagely, seizing Kol by the collar. The youngest brother shoved him away.

"You say that like it will protect him from you! But where is Finn, Nik? _Where is my sister?"_

Elijah grabbed his brother by the shoulder. "Kol, this is madness. What you've done, what you are – you will destroy everything."

Both Kols gazed at their elder brother, the younger full of disbelief, the elder shuttered completely. "Tell me, brother, what is it about him that makes you love him so?"

"Marcellus is-"

"Hang Marcellus!" Kol shouted. "I mean him!" He pointed at his half-brother, watching with wary, narrowed eyes, circling around the two vampires.

"Kol, I don't –" Elijah said, confused.

"I don't want to be saved," Kol said sincerely. "But you could try. You try for him."

Behind him, Klaus drew the dagger from his pocket. Elijah gripped Kol's other shoulder, pulling his brother close, but Kol just began laughing. "You could try. I wouldn't be worth it, but none of us are. I thought that was the point of family."

He broke away from his brother's grip and turned. The real Kol's hand stretched out, as if trying to stop what was going to happen next. "Brother," he muttered, watching the three spirits in front of him. "Brother, please."

Ghost Kol smiled at his brother then spotted the dagger, gleaming in the stage lights. He backed up into Elijah, who held him again. "Brother. Brother, please."

"You want to see Finn and Bekah again?" Klaus asked. "I'll gladly reunite you." Then he thrust the dagger forward into his little brother's chest, and watched impassively as the lights died from Kol's eyes and his grey body sagged in Elijah's arms.

Elijah held Kol close, picking him up as if he was just a child. "Always and forever, Niklaus?"

"Always," Klaus swore, staring down at Kol's still face. "And forever."

Then they disappeared in front of her, leaving Kol standing in the middle of a sea of bodies, hand outstretched and all alone.

His face was outlined in grief before he dropped his head, hand falling to his side. It was quiet but for the sound of Bonnie breathing.

"This is…this is your hell?" she asked finally, unable to take the silence.

Kol laughed once, a short, broken sound that echoed around the theater, glancing up at her. "Unimpressed, are you?"

"No," Bonnie said quickly. "I just – what happened with your brothers…"

"It is a terrible thing, to find you are unloved," Kol answered her unspoken question. "They didn't need me. They didn't even really want me. Nik only woke me because he was bored. I loved my family and I wanted just a piece of their hearts. A small wish, but a foolish one, too. There was no room for me." He laughed that horrible laugh again. "And now I have all the room in the world. Whoever did this at least had a sense of humor.

"So, yes, love. This is my hell. The day I realized what I was to my family. Eighty years from now, Rebekah will betray my plans for vengeance to Klaus and the cycle will repeat itself. In around two hundred years I will be staked by your moronic boyfriend and they won't even mourn me when I'm gone."

Kol stared at the massacre around him. "I was no better or worse. I was simply not enough."

Bonnie was silent, not knowing what to say. The bodies around her sickened her, made it impossible to ignore the monster Kol truly was, but his words were echoes of things that she herself had thought in her worst moments.

"The worst moment," she whispered. "This is what the prison world is built around." She looked around, trying to spot anything out of the ordinary. The magic must be concentrated here, but there appeared to be no obvious signs of a spell.

"I don't feel anything," Kol offered quietly. "There's – there's nothing here."

"There must be," Bonnie insisted. "This is the end result of the curse, to torture you forever. This must be it, Kol, we just have to figure out what it is." She glanced at the bodies strewn across the theatre. Seven in the audience, poor Horatio in the pit where Klaus' hit had flung him, and twelve on the stage. _Twelve,_ the number called out to her, but she couldn't figure out why.

Kol went to the edge of the stage, looking down into the pit. "Maybe it's the spirits? They're trapped here with us, that's got to be part of the spell."

"And they're all human?" she asked, counting the bodies over and over. _Twelve._

"If they weren't I couldn't have compelled them," Kol answered.

"Twelve humans," Bonnie said slowly. "This can't – no, that's not it."

Kol turned back to her. "Twelve humans? There's a least twenty of them."

"On the stage. There's twelve. There's twelve, Kol."

Kol counted quickly, eyes narrowed, then turned back to her, shrugging. Bonnie walked to the center of the stage, hands shaking. "You said – the brazier, in the Algiers coven, it could summon demons."

"Yes, if called by a very powerful witch."

"And the whispers in the Treme haven – how many voices would say there were? Twelve?"

"I don't –" Kol said, the stopped, realizing what she was saying. Bonnie turned to him, her skin feeling stretched and thin as if she might shatter any moment from her shaking. "Bon, you don't know."

"I don't know," she agreed. "I hope I'm wrong. Because if your world is built on an Expression Triangle, we're never getting out."

* * *

AN: Next chapter will be all Kai, all the time. So you have that to look forward to. Is Bonnie right? Is she wrong? WHO KNOWS?


	7. We'd All Like to Rearrange

Hi people. I'm going to apologize in advance: this chapter is not my best. For those of you that keep up on Tumblr, I have had raging migraines all weekend. I'm fairly certain they're just a symptom of a sinus infection, because I get those annually and mine has been very delayed this year. It includes head pain, neck pain, blurry vision, lovely stuff. And I'm sure you're like 'why didn't you just wait?' But here's the thing, these past few chapters have been one of the 'humps' of the story and I desperately needed to get over it.

Also, I slag off on Caroline quite a bit, but I think I also bring it around, so if you're a really big Caro fan watch out for that.

The song I was imagining playing at the rave was "Emergency" by Icona Pop. The other song I used for this chapter was "Fix You" by The Offspring, both for the friends towards Caroline and Kai/Bonnie.

* * *

Chapter 7: We'd All Like to Rearrange

* * *

"But how did you know it was _Bonnie?_ "

Kai let out an annoyed groan, rolling his head back onto the couch. "Jo. Why?"

His twin's eyebrows raised high and he gestured at Alaric Saltzman with one hand. Josette took one look at Ric, then turned back to Kai. "New game: every time one of your questions could be answered with ' _you murdered our family,'_ I get to hit you."

"Doesn't sound like a very fun game," Kai said, trying to edge away from his sister but very firmly wrapped in the blankets Ric had found in one of the closets. Josette smirked and then whacked him on the arm. "Ow! You're a doctor, aren't you supposed to do no harm?"

Liv, begrudgingly settled in close on his other side to warm him up faster, spoke up. "Does that count? I think that counts. Hit him again, Josie."

Jo looked tempted, but instead just laid her palms on Kai's chilly cheeks. "That's a little better," she said, satisfied, and pulled her hands away. "When's the last time you ate?"

"Um, yesterday?"

"Before or after the twelve pack?" Liv asked, gleefully helpful. Jo's mouth made a small 'O' and she glared disapprovingly at Kai. Kai made a face at the blonde and she grinned widely in response. "I'm betting before. 'Cause he's a dumbass."

Standing in front of them, hands on his hips, Alaric cleared his throat loudly. "How do you know it was Bonnie, Kai?"

"Who else could it be?" Kai asked, irritated both at the question and the interruption. "Liv and I did the spell, we thought of Bonnie, and then I got hypothermia standing in an ancient house with crappy air conditioning in the middle of May. Bonnie was driving through Canada, which is populated entirely by snowflakes, moose, and really bitchy geese. Ergo, she's cold and trapped somewhere, and we need to go help her."

" _Ergo_ , you're jumping to conclusions," Alaric spat back. "You said you didn't actually see anything, you just got cold. How do you know the cold wasn't you catching interference from the Prison World? Also, Jo said that spell was usually reserved for family members. Who's to say you weren't actually reading another member of Gemini Coven by accident? And lastly, why did only you feel it? Liv is fine."

Kai opened his mouth but was too furious to actually make words at that precise moment. He began struggling out of the many layers of cloth covering him to tell Alaric exactly what he thought of his bullshit to his face but Jo laid a warning hand on his arm.

Kai glared at her mutinously but settled back into the cushions. Jo, hand still firmly on his arm, turned to Alaric. "Honey, what you're saying might be true, but what if it's not? What if what Kai felt is real? Are you really willing to risk Bonnie like that?"

"I – _no,_ of course not," Alaric said, frowning. "But we can't trust him, Jo, you know that."

Liv huffed. "This isn't about trusting Kai. This is about Bonnie. And it's not like your opinion matters anyway."

"Olivia," Jo said sharply while Alaric's eyebrows rose in surprise and Kai choked down a chuckle.

"What?" Liv shot back. "It _doesn't._ He only knows because of you, sis."

Alaric sat down heavily in the couch across from them, rubbing a hand across his brow in frustration. "God, what a mess. You called Damon, right? I'm guessing his the opinion that matters."

"Since he apparently controls everything you guys do," Kai said acidly. "Yeah. He hasn't responded."

"He's the only one with his head on straight," Alaric said, defeated and tired. "Caroline with her mom and Stefan with Caroline and Elena chasing after both of them with fucking Enzo wandering around making everyone's life miserable. God, what a mess."

"I think your boyfriend's broken, Sissy," Kai whispered conspiratorially to Josette. She rolled her eyes at him and shook her head, standing up.

"Everything's going to be fine, okay? Caroline will adjust with Stefan's help, and Damon will help Kai rescue Bonnie. Everything's going to be fine. Now I am going to make you some food," she said, pointing at Kai. "Be nice." She left the room and Alaric stood, grabbing up one of Damon's bottles of whiskey and pouring himself a glass.

"We are depending on the mental stability of teenage vampires," Kai said in a slow, dead voice.

"Yep. And if history has taught me anything," Alaric started, then took a huge gulp, wincing as it went down. "We're all doomed."

He finished off the rest of his glass in one huge swig then tossed it down onto the tabletop, watching in spin and waiting until it settled until he spoke again, looking at Kai. "Why are you doing this?"

"Why does everyone keep asking me this? Stupid Luke gave me stupid emotions and now I feel guilty. I want to save her because she needs to be saved, and that's it. That's all of it." Kai demanded, peeling back some of the blankets now that Jo was out of the room if only to make emphatic hand gestures. "Is it even me, or is it actually a Bonnie thing? I mean you guys don't seem to be too concerned. Like ever. Is it so bizarre for someone to want to save her?"

Alaric looked deeply offended for a moment, then his face melted into something sadder and he looked back down at the glass, spinning it round and round. "Bonnie saves _us_ ," he said finally. "I guess it's something you never think of. Saving a savior."

* * *

"Alright, if we can't find Damon, we'll find Elena," Kai snarled, pacing in front of the fire. Damon hadn't responded to any of their texts and since Josette cleared him thirty minutes ago he had only grown more and more anxious. "Stefan said something about a rave. Probably at Whitmore. Do you know anything about it?"

Liv shook her head when he rounded on her, and then began to pull out her phone. "Tyler probably does. I'll ask him." She stood and left the room, already dialing.

Kai turned to Josie, cuddled up to Alaric on the couch. "Well, thanks for stopping by, Sissy, but this house has a bad history with pregnant ladies. You and Ric probably wanna call it a night."

Jo straightened in her seat, alarmed. "Kai, you need rest. Let the kids sort out their problems tonight and talk to Damon tomorrow."

"Did everyone just collectively space when I mentioned the part where Bonnie is freezing?" Kai said, throwing his hands in the air.

Jo stood, palms facing him. "Okay, and _I agree with you._ Something has to be done. Just…maybe you should try again. To be sure."

She reached down, picking up a candle inside its tacky wooden holder from the coffee table, and handed it to him while Kai stared at her, dumbfounded. "My lips turned _blue,_ Josie."

"Only because Liv wasn't paying attention," Jo said reassuringly. "If something starts to happen, I'll bring you back. I promise, Kai. If it happens again, you find Damon. If not, you go home and get some sleep."

Kai did agree to deals as a general rule – he liked making them far better – so he simply took the candle from her hands. "You just like to watch me suffer."

"It does have its appeal," Josette agreed, then placed her hands over his. At his raised eyebrows she rolled her eyes. "Just do the spell. I'll be here."

Kai nodded, took a deep breath, and closed his eyes. He pictured Bonnie Bennett, brave, loyal, patient. " _Phesmatos Physium Calva."_

His vision went black again, not even the red glow from the fire seeping through his eyelids to provide light. The cold was gone, but he felt – very afraid. Anxious. Lost.

 _Show me something,_ he demanded. His sister's hands clenched tight on his, but he ignored her, concentrating on the spell. He was the goddamned leader of the Gemini Coven and a prison world wasn't enough to stop his magic. He could always find Bonnie before, no matter where she went, and he would find her now.

Josie hands were on his shoulders now and there was an enormous pressure building behind his eyes. The fear he felt rattled up his spine and his head tipped back, mouth open, to the ceiling. There was a flash of a glass-strewn floor and a smashed clocked and then he was falling.

Kai hit the couch hard enough to knock the wind out of him. "What the hell?"

Jo was at his side, shoving a blanket into his hands and shoving his hands up to his face. "Tip your head back, your nose is bleeding."

Alaric was standing in front of them; clearly he had been the one who pushed him. He looked anxious. "Did you see her?"

"I wouldn't see her unless she was looking in a mirror," Kai said condescendingly, his head pounding. "But I saw…a floor, and glass, and…a clock? A really old clock, yeah. And she was scared."

Jo and Alaric looked at each other, then back at him, wearing matching expressions of concern. _Ugh,_ Kai thought, dabbing at his nose. _Couples._

Liv re-entered the room, phone in hand. "Tyler said he'll drive us to the party." Kai opened his mouth to protest and she raised her hand. "He also said that's the only way you're finding out where it is."

"The fratboy's got a brain," Kai said, surprised. "Will wonders never cease?"

Liv glared, then held the phone to her ear, voice deadpan. "Kai says thank you." Tyler said something in return and Liv smacked a kiss into the receiver before hanging up. "What happened to you?"

"He tried the vision spell again. Pushed himself way too hard," Josette explained. She turned to Kai expectantly. "But the cold's gone, right? You're fine."

"No deal, Sissy," Kai muttered. "She's fucking terrified. How soon will Tyler be here?"

Tyler arrived in thirty minutes, a blonde boy sitting in the passenger side that he graciously ceded to Liv when the Parker siblings came up to the car. He slid into the back opposite Kai.

"Liv said Bonnie might be in trouble?" the blue-eyed boy asked straight away. Kai stopped in the process of putting on his seatbelt.

"Hi," he said slowly. "I'm Kai."

"Kai, this is Matty," Liv offered helpfully. The blonde boy grimaced.

"Matt Donovan. Nice to meet you."

Tyler snorted in derision, starting to drive. "He stabbed Bonnie, left her in the prison world, attacked me, and tried to kill Liv multiple times. Super nice." He met Kai's eyes in the rearview mirror and shrugged. "Just so we're all clear, here."

Matt Donovan turned back to Kai, blue eyes amazingly wide, and Kai rolled his eyes, the name and the face falling into place. Bonnie's Matt, the one she missed so much. Of fucking course. He prepared himself for the onslaught, maybe a punch or two, but Matt's face grew serious and he nodded. "Got it. Psychopath. Can do. Now what about Bonnie?"

Amazing. The whole time Kai had been agonizing over Damon and Elena and their craptacular definition of friendship and here this guy was the whole time. Give Kai an army of Matt Donovans and he'd have Bonnie back within the day.

"Bonnie's been in the prison world too long," Kai explained. "She should've been back a week ago. So I did a spell to check on her, twice. The first time I felt like I was being flash-frozen. The second she was scared out of her mind and I saw broken glass on a wooden floor. She's in danger, and we need to go back to get her."

Matt's hands clenched into fists. "So why haven't you _done it_?"

"I'm not going alone, buddy. I tried asking Elena and Damon to go with me," Kai responded, palms up in an innocent gesture. "Neither of them trusted me enough."

"Nobody trusts you," Tyler said. Liv took his hand but he ignored her. "You left Bonnie for dead, man. I watched you try to kill Liv."

Kai opened his mouth to respond, but Matt beat him to it. "Who cares if we can trust him or not? It's been almost a year, Tyler. If Bon's in trouble-"

"Fine," Tyler snapped, turning the car a little too hard around the curve of the road. "But we've got to get Caro locked down first, Matt. If she kills someone while her switch is flipped she will lose her freaking mind. Elena's called in the cavalry," he added to Liv.

"I don't know why she won't just leave Caroline alone. It's what Care wanted," Matt grumbled. Kai glanced at him, amused. Luke would've loved this guy.

Tyler smacked his hands against the steering wheel in a quick staccato, obviously irritated. "So Care wanders around for a year, not killing anyone. Sure, okay, except _no_ because this is Caroline. A girl steals her hairdryer in the bathroom one morning so Caro bashes her head into the mirror, leaving it to us to clean up her mess. And she'll look at us and say, ' _But I didn't kill her, guys!'"_

"So we get the bitchy Barbie's switched turned back on, we can go save the girl who's _actually_ in danger?" Kai summarized snidely.

Matt leaned back in his seat, heaving a tired sigh. "Guess so."

The drive to Whitmore took about an hour and a half – Tyler got them there in just over fifty minutes. "The rave's somewhere on this side of campus," the former werewolf explained as they all climbed out of the car.

"Yeah," Liv said from the other side of the car. "I'm guessing we just follow the flashing lights." When Tyler and Kai came around she was pointed in the direction of an ugly, flat building with lights blinking in time to the distant thumps of music.

They made their way across the grass to the building, Kai feeling an odd nervousness that he couldn't explain and he couldn't fight down. The warehouse was crawling with kids, most of them completely smashed and all so close to each other. His breathing started to pick up, glimpsing the press of bodies from the open door leading in and he slowed down as he tried to control it.

"You okay, man?" Matt Donovan asked, looking back and seeing Kai place each foot in front of the other slowly, staring wide-eyed at the ground. Liv turned worriedly at his words but Kai took a deep breath, waved a hand, and caught up.

"Fine. Let's do this."

They begrudgingly let Liv bat her eyes at the bouncer at the entrance to let them in without student IDs. Inside the music was impossibly loud and seemed to have no discernible melody, just a series of icy beats and low thumps that all the bodies on the floor flung themselves around to.

"We need to find Elena," Matt shouted. "If you see Caroline, just keep walking."

"Stefan's in here, too," Tyler added.

Kai nodded. "And probably Damon."

Liv looked around, going up on her tip-toes to look over the ground. "We should probably split up."

The thought of being alone in a crowd this size made Kai feel light-headed. "Maybe two-and-two? I don't know these people - you do, little sister."

Tyler looked like he wanted to protest, but Matt was already nodding, grabbing at his shoulder. "C'mon, Elena's expecting us anyway. Call us if you need us." He walked to the left, skirting around the edge of the crowd, Tyler angrily in tow and casting baleful looks at Kai over his shoulder before they both disappeared.

Liv was watching him go; Kai touched her arm lightly and jerked his head to the left. "You'll see him in like twenty minutes, let's go."

He let Liv lead the way through the throngs of people. It was so packed in the building that they had to shove their way through the crowds, and every time someone bumped into him his heart jumped. There was _too many of them_. How did they stand it, the heat and the pressure? The noise of it all?

"Liv?" he called out, but it sounded like his voice was coming from underwater. His sister didn't appear to hear him, blonde head moving back and forth as she scanned the room.

This was ridiculous – he was _fine._ This is what he wanted. _Look at all these people,_ he thought. _You'll never be alone again._

It gave him less comfort than he thought it would. The next person that jostled him he zapped with a small electric spell that sent the boy reeling face-first into a busty brunette's ample cleavage. Her look of disgust and corresponding slap made Kai laugh but the sound was shaky.

"Kai!" Liv called. She had turned back to find him too far away and she rushed to him, grabbing his wrist and leading him on. "Keep up, dumbass!"

Her magic met his and skittered across the surface of his skin, and Kai breathed in it, calming down. He had magic, he had Liv, he had control. He owned this over-crowded tequila soaked hellhole.

They found Stefan first, hovering by one of the miniature bars set all along the outside wall, watching something in the crowd with a worried expression so severe his frown was practically an upside down V. It took a minute to even notice the two people standing just to his left and staring at him expectantly and even longer to focus enough to place who they were.

"Kai…? What are you-" There was a loud cheer from somewhere in the crowd and the vampire's head snapped around, eyes darting back and forth. He apparently didn't find anything too worrisome because he quickly turned back. "What are you doing here?"

"It's Bonnie!" Kai shouted over the music. "We think she's in danger. Of the imminent variety."

Stefan's eyes widened and he glanced from them to the crowd twice before groaning and rubbing his forehead. "Find Damon! He's with Elena at the main bar. I'll try to get Caroline to come with me and then we'll get out of here."

He darted into the crowd before Kai or Liv could contest this plan so the two siblings gave each other dubious looks and identical shrugs then plunged forward, into the crowd and through to the bar. Kai kept his hands firmly on his sister's shoulders as she once again led the way, sending off sparks to anyone who got too close.

Elena Gilbert was perched on the bar, waving off the bartender every time he came by between drink orders to tell her to get down, watching the middle of the crowd like a hawk. "Stefan's with her," she was reporting to Damon, standing by her side, drink in one hand and the other wrapped around one of her crossed legs. "She – ooh, I think she might have just punched him."

"Hey!" Kai announced cheerily, stepping around Liv. Damon and Elena's heads snapped towards him, wearing matching expressions of shock. _Couples._ "This looks like a fun night out. Drinks, dancing, drama. And don't you two look cozy?"

He eyed Damon's hand on Elena's leg and to his surprise the older vampire removed it, looking uncomfortable. Damon placed his drink on the bar and stood at just the right angle that Elena was mostly blocked from Kai's view. It was impressive and completely see-through. Kai didn't even try to hide his eye-roll.

"What do you want, Kai?"

Liv, who had been knocked into Kai's back repeatedly from where she was standing behind him, wedged herself between her brother and the bar, grabbed Damon's drink, and downed it one gulp. "Dear _God_ , I needed that. Where's my boyfriend?"

Elena tilted backwards so she could be seen. "Tyler's here?"

Liv nodded. "With Matt." Elena sighed as if a great weight had been taken off her and tipped her head onto Damon's shoulder, who patted it comfortingly.

"So disturbing," Kai muttered under his breath.

Damon tilted his head, blue eyes glittering menacingly. "Why are you here?"

"You know how much I love to crash a good party," Kai said, completely deadpan. Damon grimaced. "Oh, and also, your best friend's in trouble. I thought you might want to know."

Elena's head came up so fast Kai swore he heard a crack, but she seemed unfazed, crawling down from her perch to come around Damon's other side. "Bonnie? Bonnie's in trouble? How much?"

"How do you know?" Damon added suspiciously.

Kai opened his mouth to explain when Tyler and Matt finally found them. Tyler had lipstick on his neck and Kai looked down at Liv, grinning when her eyes narrowed and her hair began to lift in the air, buoyed by the stirrings of furious magic.

"She attacked me!" Tyler protested before anyone could say anything. Beside him, Matt nodded solemnly.

"It was not pretty. Where's Caroline?" This last bit was directed at Elena, who had gone in for a hug.

She pulled away and shook her head. "Stefan's watching her. She seems to be keeping her word, but I still don't like it. She could slip at any moment."

"Then we'll snap her neck and throw her in the basement," Damon said sharply. He turned to Kai. "Bonnie?"

"Liv and I did the Patrick Swayze spell to check up on her," Kai explained quickly. "She wasn't at the mansion. We couldn't find her with a locator spell. When we got back we tried a different spell, to see what she was seeing, but all I got was frostbite and some pretty strong terror. There was a vision but it was just a flash."

"I don't understand," Elena said, brow furrowed.

Kai rolled his eyes. "The sensations were coming from Bonnie. She was so cold she was freezing and she was scared. Something's gone wrong."

"We need to go and get her," Matt said firmly. Damon closed his eyes tightly and rubbed his hands over his face while beside him Elena's eyes grew bright with brimming tears.

"Oh, God, I _left her_ over there," she whispered, then looked up at Kai. "You told me but I thought-"

"Pity party later," Kai cut her off. "Rescue mission now."

Suddenly Stefan was at Elena's side, looking half-crazed. "I messed up. I-I…"

"Where's Caroline?" Tyler and Damon demanded at the same time, but it was clear from Stefan's abject despair what had happened.

Kai leaned down to his sister's level. "How have they survived this long?" She watched with detached fascination as Elena finally began to cry while Matt calmed her, Stefan and Tyler began arguing, and Damon ordered two shots, and shrugged at his question.

Damon took one shot, handed the other to Stefan, and forcibly tapped the two glasses together before both brothers threw them back and slammed the glasses down on the bar.

"We go after her. We make sure she's fine. And then this guy," Damon's super-strong grip landed on Kai's shoulder, clenching down so hard Kai barely held back a flinch. "Is taking us to Bonnie. Got it?"

Kai superheated Damon's hand and the vampire whipped it away, hissing. Kai smirked at the group watching him with wary eyes. "No super-complex five stage plan? You guys _are_ learning."

"Where did she go?" Elena asked desperately. Her two best friends slipping out of her grasp seemed to have rapidly dissolved her sanity. Matt placed a hand on her shoulder and she took a deep gulping breath, expression settling on Stefan. "What did you say to her?"

"Something better left unsaid," Stefan answered grimly. "At least for now."

"Caroline's an attention-seeker," Liv piped up. Matt, Stefan, and Elena frowned at her, but she merely shrugged. "Please, it's classic Daddy Issues. She wants a man, and she wants that man to love her more than anyone else in the world – which, with you around, is pretty hard to come by," she added, smiling meanly at Elena. Then she looked at Stefan. "She wanted you to follow her, genius. When she realizes you didn't, she's gonna up the stakes. So, you know – _way to go."_

"You're very scary," Tyler told his girlfriend with a smile. Liv preened at the compliment.

As if on cue, Stefan's phone began ringing in his pocket. He pulled it out, confused at the screen. "It's Enzo. I don't-"

"Oh, my God," Kai muttered, rolling his head around to ease some of the tension. "Just _do something!"_

Stefan glared at him as he answered, but his expression quickly morphed from confusion to concern. "Caroline, why do you have Enzo's phone?"

Kai watched Elena, the most expressive of the three, to figure out what was happening. Her face flitted rapidly from befuddlement to terror just as Stefan asked "What the hell are you doing with Sarah?"

Kai glanced down at his sister. "Who the fuck is Sarah?" But Liv's expression matched his own.

Caroline gave Stefan a bit more information then clearly hung up, judging by the way Stefan's head jerked away from the phone to look at the 'Call Ended' screen. "She had Sarah. She's…Damon and I had a distant relation-"

"Uncle Nephew Zach!" Kai guessed, excitedly. "Oh, please tell me it's the pregnant lady's kid."

"It is," Damon answered, voice flat. Kai suppressed a cackle. The sheer insanity of all it was almost enough to override his irritation at yet another speedbump to saving Bonnie.

"She's Zach's daughter? Your niece?" Elena clarified. Stefan, still brooding at Kai's interruption, nodded.

"Where are they?" Matt demanded, steering the conversation back on track.

"At that bar, The Grasshopper," Stefan said. "Look, I think it's better if I went alone."

"No can do, little brother," Damon said, easily but firmly. "Crazy Caroline wants attention, we'll give it to her."

And that is how three vampires, two witches, a werewolf, and a human ended up walking into a bar on a Thursday night. There was a joke in there, but the look on Caroline's face was way funnier than anything Kai could come up with at that moment.

"What. The hell. Is this?" The blonde, pretty vampire bit out through clenched teeth, eyes roving back and forth between the seven of them. "I said I wanted to be left alone!"

She angrily flitted about, mixing up a batch for margaritas, which seemed to gall Liv. "Hey, you're gonna pay for those, right?"

Caroline rolled her eyes, ignoring her. Not the smartest move. The glass she was dipping in salt exploded in her hand and Liv stepped forward, snarling. "Every drink you waste comes of out my paycheck, bitch, so pay up!"

Caroline picked the glass out of her hand idly and then without a word flicked it lightning fast in Liv's direction. Kai barely had time to put up a barrier before Stefan blurred and reappeared at Tyler's side, dumping a barely scratched Liv at his side before turning back to Caroline.

"I'm sorry for what I said, but you don't have to hurt Sarah."

Caroline began laughing and Kai tensed. He was more than happy to just sit back and watch, waiting for these morons to sort out their various drama, but he recognized that laugh. Hell, he invented that laugh. There was a blankness in Caroline's eyes that he could remember looking back at him when he looked in the mirror and for the first time, Kai felt something of what his family must've felt, looking at him. What Bonnie must have seen. It was ugly and alien and when Caroline's eyes skating over him, briefly meeting his, he didn't even feel like a person anymore. Not to this blonde at least. He was just a thing.

He remembered that, before the merge. Staring at people and thinking how very like toys they were. How easily broken. It had been fun.

"Oh, _I'm_ not going to," Caroline finally answered over her giggles. She picked up what must've been Enzo's phone and spoke into it. "Liam, honey, you still there?"

" _Hello?!"_ The boy's voice on the other end was terrified and Elena surged forward, only stopped by Caroline's raised eyebrows. Damon, Kai noticed out of the corner of his eye, began surreptitiously crossing around to her right side, waiting for the moment to strike. Kai began gathering energy to himself, his hair standing on end with static electricity. He could feel Olivia's magic meet his from across the room and twine, the air growing heavy and smelling of ozone.

"Sarah is helping Liam with his surgical skills," Caroline informed the rest of the group. They could hear a girl screaming on the other end of the phone. Kai had to hand to the blonde, it was a pretty nice plan. Gruesome yet clean.

"Where are you, Liam?" Tyler shouted. Caroline darted over, turning the phone off speaker so Liam's answer couldn't be heard, but the vampires already caught whatever he said.

"You take one step out that door and I tell him to saw out her heart!" Caroline threatened when Elena tensed to run. The brunette froze.

Kai rolled his eyes. "Oh, my God, people." He reached a hand out and Enzo's phone went soaring into his hands, catching it neatly. "Never go for the heart straight away. That's like playing Go Fish with the cards facing the other guy.

Caroline's eyes turned red, her pretty mouth carving into a snarl. She was already mid-lunge when Liv and Kai both flung their hands out, halting her in mid-air.

"You're good," Kai told her. "But I'm bored. Hey, Liam, buddy?" He turned the phone on speaker.

" _Help me!"_

"That's the idea. Don't move, alright? Elena Gilbert's on her way –" Elena nodded and sped off. "And she's gonna come rescue you. It'll be a nice role reversal for her, so really play up the whole damsel in distress thing."

" _I – okay?"_

"Liam!" Caroline yelled. Kai lowered his hand and she dropped to the floor, but Liv's hand were at the ready to push her away if she made a move. "Listen to me, cut her –"

Kai's hand shot back up and Caroline's neck twisted brutally with a snap that made Matt and Liv jump back in horror. "Don't cut anything, Liam."

" _But she told me to!"_

"Sure, okay, she told you to," Stefan said. Kai eyed him warily but held the phone in his direction so Liam could hear better. "But she didn't say when. Just try to hold off."

" _I don't think I can!"_

Kai huffed. "You are going to cut into a very scared, presumably innocent teenage girl. You're telling me you can't fight that?"

There was a deep breath and a shaky exhale. There was a curious sound of metal on metal – probably Liam trying to put down whatever he was going to use to cut Sarah Salvatore. " _I – I can try."_

Stefan and Damon relaxed simultaneously. Matt crossed over to Caroline's crumpled body, lifting and taking her over to one of the chairs, Tyler joining him after kissing Liv's forehead. Kai passed off the phone to Stefan and went to perch on a table not far from where Caroline sat.

"I was wondering what was taking you so long," Liv teased him, coming to sit beside him. "I thought you would break her neck straight off the bat."

"I thought about it. Didn't think it would score me many points with the Scooby Gang, though." The two siblings shared a sarcastic smirk and watched. Elena's arrival could be heard over the phone, and after it was done and she'd compelled Liam and Sarah to go home and sleep the night off, she promised Stefan she'd return and hung up.

She was just arriving back when Caroline began stirring again. "What did you do to her?" The Gilbert girl demanded of Kai, but he merely made a face.

Stefan took the seat across from Caroline, Tyler at one shoulder and Matt in between the two vampires, leaning against the table, as Caroline's eyes fluttered open. She saw Stefan and the snarl returned, but Elena and Damon were behind her to hold her in place.

"I know you think you can handle this," Stefan told her softly, quietly. "But you can't."

" _I'm fine!"_ Caroline yelled. "All I needed was space. Why couldn't you just give me that?"

"Because you're dangerous," Elena told her, restraining hand turning into comforting circles. "Even if you don't think you are. And you're going to turn it on one day and it's all going to come back and you don't know how much that will suck, Caroline. We're trying to save you from that."

Caroline wrenched her shoulder away. "I don't need saving!"

"But your best friend does," Kai finally chimed in, launching himself off the table and swaggering towards the group.

Caroline glared at him balefully. "Why are you here?"

"Because I am apparently the only one who still cares about Bonnie Bennett," Kai spat at her. He expected some response but Caroline was beyond caring now. He wondered if this is what Josette saw the night she helped their father throw him in the Prison World. "While you made your friends chase after you because you refused to grow the hell up and deal with it, Bonnie's been trapped in my prison world-"

"That you left her in!" Caroline shouted, struggling against Damon's hold.

Kai shrugged, nodding. "That I left her in. And now I'm trying to save her from. Bonnie's in trouble, and we're all going to pretend we're halfway decent people and go get her out. Including you."

Caroline stilled, eyes glittering dangerously up at him as she smiled and leaned forward. "I want my year."

"You're not getting it," Damon snapped, hand going white-knuckled on Caroline's shoulder. To her credit, she didn't even flinch. Stefan shook his head minutely at his elder brother then placed his hand on Caroline's knee.

"Caroline-"

"No!" she said forcefully. "You bent over backwards for Elena when she turned it off for Jeremy. All I'm asking for is the same courtesy. You can go save Bonnie without me."

"And leave you here to tear up the town," Tyler said derisively. "Not gonna happen."

Kai had reached his limit. He telekinetically pushed Stefan's chair away, and crouched in front of Caroline, grabbing her chin when she wouldn't look at him. "You tried to hurt my sister. Every second I waste on you hurts Bonnie. I suggest you listen." Caroline rolled her eyes and jerked her head, and Kai sent the magical equivalent of about seventy volts through her. "Here's what's gonna happen, _Care_ : We are saving Bonnie, with or without you. I would prefer without, honestly, because you have to be about the shittiest friend in existence. But these people seem to care about you, and I need their help. So I'm going to do them a favor. You are going to grow up. You are going to stop being a raging bitch. You are going to flip the goddamned switch. Or I am going to throw you into the Salvatore basement and seal you in there until you do."

Caroline smiled at him, all fangs. "They'd never let you do that."

Damon chuckled from behind her. "Watch me, Blondie." Caroline's eyes widened and she looked up past Kai to Stefan. Whatever she saw there was almost enough to flip her switch right there, because Kai swore he could see her heart break.

She closed her eyes, breathing in on a choked laugh, and slumped, defeated, into the chair. "I have all these pictures of Bonnie, in our room. But I can't remember what she sounds like. It's gonna be like that, for my mom. But I can't save my mom."

Kai released her face, sighing and placing his arm on her knee to lean his head against it, like they were friends and this was a normal conversation. "I was trapped in a prison world, by myself, for eighteen years. My mother – I loved – but I couldn't remember the color of her eyes after five years. They were just like yours, by the way," he said to Liv, lingering on the edge of the group. She was staring at him wonderingly and Kai realized just how much he was giving away. But this girl, Caroline, she was familiar to him. She was lost and she loved it because being found, being exposed, had given her one too many scars. She wasn't precisely like he had been; she had chosen this, and she actually knew how to be a good person. It probably came naturally to her, when she had her humanity.

But he'd wanted this, what she wanted, when he'd had nothing. All this attention, if only so he could make believe it was control. Or love. He doubted he'd have turned out any different if he'd been given it, but he wasn't Caroline.

"If you stay like this," he told her. "You're going to forget more important things than her voice." He didn't need to spell it out for her; her eyes widened as his words sunk in and Kai stood, satisfied, and walked back to his sister.

Elena took his place, kneeling so her torso was completely against Caroline's legs, her hands on the blonde's arms. "I need you," she whispered to the other girl. "And she needs you. Bonnie's in danger, Care, and she's alone. I'm so sorry, for everything, but _please come back to me._ "

"Do you still love me?" The words sounded odd coming from such a robotic, emotionless voice but he could tell how important the answer was to Caroline.

Elena sounded near tears. "I'll always love you."

"No one's gonna ever love me like that again. I'm never going to feel it again, Elena. If I come back, it'll be gone. Everything's blank now, and it's...so nice. But if I come back, it'll fill right up again. I'll have your love. And yours," she said, looking up at Matt, Tyler and Stefan, who nodded. "And Bonnie's," she added quietly. "But my mom's – it'll just be gone. Just scar tissue. How am I supposed to…"

"You just do," Stefan said quietly. Kai looked at him curiously. Was that all there was to it? Was that the big secret? Was he just supposed to go through life carrying around Luke's legacy like a stone in his chest, weighing him down?

He wasn't sure he was strong enough for that, and it terrified him. Bonnie had been the first person he'd seen in eighteen years, but even then she was so extraordinarily passionate about everything she did; every word she said was with conviction, even when she was scared. She meant it. She meant everything. And it had been beautiful to him, but it had been alien and unreal. He'd wanted to break every piece of her and mold her again in his image just so it didn't hurt to look at her.

 _Aren't you tired_ , he'd wanted to ask. _Isnt't it exhausting? Come down to the dark with me, Bon, and I'll tell you the secret to surviving a thousand cuts. It's really simple, I swear: you just don't bleed._

But the merge had dragged him up to the light and now he was stuck. Wilting in the sun, if he wanted to keep on with the metaphor, but he had never been very good with those. Up here he loved his sisters. Up here he cared if Bonnie Bennett lived or not. Up here he watched Caroline Forbes turn her switch back on and felt pity for her.

The blonde began crying immediately, falling into Elena's ready arms. Matt and Tyler stepped forward, hovering anxiously over the two girls while Damon dragged Stefan a ways away, whispering in his stricken little brother's ear.

Life was easier in the dark. He knew it, embraced it, developed fucking night vision over the years. He watched the tears and the hugs and the trapped feeling came creeping up on him again, crawling up his spine.

Then his sister's hand clasped his. Briefly, but firmly. He looked down at Liv, smiling slightly at him. "You did good. I didn't know you knew how."

Kai laughed as the feeling receded. "I'm on a learning curve, little sister. Give me a year and I'll be rescuing children from burning orphanages."

Liv snorted. "Only 'cause you're the one the set the fire."

And it occurred to him to be hurt like this, but his sister was still smiling so he let it go. She was probably right anyway.

"Oh, my God, Bonnie!" Caroline said, pulling away from her hug with Tyler and marching over to Kai. "We're going, right? We'll go, Kai, we'll get her back. We'll even tell her you saved her so she doesn't, you know, melt your face off."

"Much obliged," Kai said drily. Then he cleared his throat and looked at Damon expectantly.

The eldest vampire nodded. "We'll meet up tomorrow. How many do you want to take with you?"

"I'm going," Caroline said adamantly. Her guilt was apparently already hitting her.

"I can manage as many as can fit in that circle," Kai told Damon, eyeing Caroline dubiously.

"So, four, at max."

Elena stepped forward. "Care, are you sure you don't want to take a few days. Let it sink in?"

"I'm sorry, what better place is there to process than a prison world without a thousand people constantly calling me to tell me how sorry they are?" Caroline said, rounding on her best friend. Kai had to admit there was a fair point there.

Matt raised his hand. "I'd like to go. I'm only human, but I'm pretty good with the weird."

Kai cocked his head. "This could take a while, you know?"

"I don't care. I'll take time off. As long as we get Bonnie back," Matt answered sincerely. Kai nodded. Caroline he doubted, but this blue-eyed human was one hundred percent on the rescue mission bandwagon.

"Sounds good to me."

He noticed an odd exchange between Elena and Damon and realized the two were silently debating which one of them would go. He decided to be proactive; wandering around with both Caroline and Elena would be a nightmare. "Elena, can I ask you a huge favor?"

She looked at him warily. "…yes?"

"Like I said, it may take a few days, and my dad's still out there. He might try to sink his manipulative claws into my sisters. Or try to kill them. Again. Alaric can't always be with Josette when she's at school, but you can. Mind watching out for her for me?"

The more he thought about it, the more glad he was he had thought of this. Josie wouldn't be able to resist telling their dad about the baby and he would be back in town any day now, ostensibly to congratulate her and give her tips.

Elena looked between him and Damon and sighed resignedly. "Sure, Kai. She'll be fine, I promise."

"So I'll be number four," Damon said, trying and failing to hide his pleased look. "You have plan, O Mega-powerful Coven Leader?"

"The plan is save Bonnie," Kai said. When Damon grimaced, he grinned. "Don't worry, there's some extra stuff in there. I'll explain it all tomorrow. It's gonna be tough without the full moon, but I can make do with some of the constellations. You'll have to help me get through," he told Liv. "But I can get us back out." She nodded and Kai turned to the group in full, smiling gleefully just to hide how relieved he was that this was finally happening. "So, tomorrow, meet at the Salvatores'. We're going witch hunting!"

* * *

OH GOD IT'S DONE.

Sidenote: I watched this season very sporadically, so I have no idea if or when Kai actually did meet Matt and Caroline. If he did, pretend he didn't. Next up we go back to split POVs and Kol and Bonnie try to figure this weirdness out.


	8. I'm The Heavy Burden That You Can't Bear

Hi, sorry I'm late. I actually really like this chapter. I hope you do too. But I think I might have to change the genre with how creepy its getting. (I watched the Darach season of Teen Wolf while writing this, which probably explains it. You can insert the evil choir anytime you want, I swear it fits.)

Songs for this one are "The Devil Within" by Digital Daggers and "Who Are You, Really?" by Mikky Ekko.

* * *

Chapter 8: I'm The Heavy Burden That You Can't Bear

* * *

By the end of it all, Bonnie was too tired to even be particularly horrified she might be trapped in an Expression-created prison world. She wanted away from the bodies and away from the vampire that killed them. Kol led her silently to a large house on the far end of town that she guessed was the Mikaelson mansion and showed her to what seemed to be one of the thousands of guest rooms.

"No clever name?" she teased, but her voice came out flat and hoarse. Kol winced through his shrug.

"The Bennett Boudoir," he offered, voice equally dead. "I'll see you in the morning, sweetheart."

She flinched at the pet name, though she had never done that before, and fell asleep still flinching at every noise she heard.

Kol was not there to wake her up in the morning, but she could hear the distant sound of glass hitting glass. She took her time going downstairs, tracing her hand along the walls. There were pictures every couple of feet, some paintings of New Orleans life, some of Viking ships rolling in the sea. One of a young boy who bore enough of a resemblance to Kol and Elijah that she knew was probably poor dead Henrik.

There were engravings. Rebekah's barely collected smile there, Klaus' brooding forehead here. One of Kol balanced precariously on top of a horse with his arms out and a certain blurriness to his smiling black and white face that suggested he was laughing, and had been for quite some time. She stared at that one for a long time. He looked so young and so happy and she wondered if she was looking at the last time he felt like that.

Kol was in the wide, galley kitchen when she finally found him, clanging around pots and pans, putting eggs and bacon on a plate. "I hope you're hungry. I just remembered I'm allergic to eggs."

Bonnie sat down at the table placed in the corner of the room, nonplussed. "You're a vampire."

"Yes," Kol agreed. "But when you spend fair amount of your childhood in what you now call…what is it, anaphylactic shock?...because your siblings keep feeding their egg-based disasters into your mouth every few month, you develop a very deep aversion to the wicked things."

Bonnie was suddenly very grateful she'd never had siblings. "Your siblings suck."

That earned a bark of laughter from Kol. "Very true, but in this case, they were young and didn't know what it was that was harming me. Rebekah, in particular, thought I was faking it to insult her cooking. Which I would've done, it was horrid stuff." He came to the table with a plate piled high with eggs and bacon and a platter of bread and butter he placed between them. "My father, however, wasn't very keen on his son being laid low by something so mundane as food. Once we had figured out the problem he developed this maddening habit of sitting me down once a week and forcing me to eat an entire plate of eggs. Not even cooked."

Bonnie, fork halfway to her mouth, stopped and stared at him in horror, but he just smirked and waved it off. "Finn was always waiting in the wings. Once I was coughing and wheezing on the floor enough to properly disgust Mikael my brother would swoop in and lay his hand on my chest, healing me. He so loved being the hero. I think that's where Elijah must've gotten it from, for he certainly didn't get it from our parents."

Bonnie didn't what to say, to any of it. She stared at the eggs on her fork dubiously but in the end was too hungry to resist. Kol stayed simple with butter on toast, and they ate the rest of their meal in silence.

"Do you have anything I can change into?" Bonnie asked him as he collected their plates and dumped them in the sink. "I don't really want to stay in these." The horror of the past day had seemed to creep into her clothes. She could smell the copper tang of her blood and the rot of the corpses on her.

"Nothing that would fit you," Kol said. "Except for Bekah's things, and all she had were dresses."

Bonnie would bet that Rebekah probably had enough clothing in this house to fill an entire room. There had to be something there she could manage in, even if it meant running around in a dress. "That's fine."

Kol raised an eyebrow but otherwise remained unruffled as he led her upstairs to a separate side of the house. There was a long hall, scattered with Klaus' drawings and various articles of clothing. More than one violin, the strings cut or the wood splintered. A goblet of blood, still fresh, on a side table that Kol scooped up and swallowed the contents of in one gulp.

"Nik told me this was Bekah's," Kol said, stopping in front of a door. "You're more than welcome to any of her belongings. In fact, please do. Take joy, as I do, that somewhere far away in time and space, my sister has suddenly grown inexplicably furious. I'll be across the hall, ripping up Niklaus' gauche paintings."

He sauntered off to do just that and Bonnie entered Rebekah Mikaelson's cold room. According to what Kol had told her, by 1821 it had been abandoned for more than a year, and the absence was felt. Dust had gathered everywhere. The bedclothes were still unmade from the last time Rebekah had crawled out from underneath them.

Bonnie found four dresses folded carefully into a trunk at the foot of the bed, all silk and satin and far too nice to wear running around New Orleans. Rebekah probably would've done so anyway; Bonnie could remember the Original kicking ass thoroughly in four inch heels. In the wardrobe she found more of what she was looking for: thin muslin dresses made for more casual wearing. She picked the thickest she could find, a blue that was probably beautiful on Rebekah but a little too light for her skin tone, and a new shift, and quickly changed. The dress was very fitted around the bust but luckily Bonnie was smaller than Rebekah all-around, so she didn't feel too constrained. She kept the boots but gave in and pulled on some stockings, lacing the tops tightly enough so there was no danger of them falling down.

She tried taking a step to go round up Kol and nearly tripped on the hem, stumbling ungracefully onto one of the chairs Rebekah had laid out in a miniature seating area. Cursing, she tugged the dress off again and pulled out her knife. The original plan was to only take off as much as she needed to walk comfortably, but by the end of Bonnie's hack job the dress fell to just above her knees. She grabbed a coat, longer than the dress now, and shoved the knife, the Cure, and the pocket watch into the pockets.

Kol laughed when she found him in Klaus' room, stabbing at paintings with a sword. "Oh, I am definitely telling Bex about this. Her head will explode."

"I'm sure her apparent past addiction to ruffles is more than enough shame to bear," Bonnie answered, fingering said eyesores that ran along the sleeves and bust. Kol merely smiled, watching her like he was amazed she was here. Where else was she to go now?

Bonnie dropped her hand. "We need to go back to the theatre."

The smile was wiped from Kol's face instantly. "Why?"

"Because if it was Expression, it would leave a mark. There's a reason why the corpses are still there when nothing else is, Kol."

"It's not Expression," Kol argued. "It can't be. Your past experience has made just made you paranoid. I killed twenty people-" Here Bonnie flinched hard and his speech slightly stumbled. "-and the fact that twelve ended up on stage is just a coincidence."

"And that will be super awesome if it turns out to be true. But we don't know. At the very least we need to examine the bodies, see if we can find a clue."

Kol's mouth set in a stubborn line and he turned back to Klaus' painting, slashing a neat line from one end to the other.

"Kol," she said, irritated. "What's the first rule of magic?"

"There must always be a balance," Kol intoned dully.

"Right. If there's an entrance, there's an exit. If there's a lock, there's a key. If there's a hole, then there's a ladder. We just have to find it."

"The Ascendant? If there even is one," Kol added darkly. Bonnie shook her head.

"I told you, this isn't like the Gemini spell-"

"And I've been wondering about that," Kol said, turning to her and swinging the sword around with a flourish. Bonnie eyed it warily, the keen look on Kol's face making her nervous. Her trepidation did not go unnoticed and Kol smirked, sauntering forward while still swinging the sword in lazy circles. Bonnie fought hard not to back up. "You have all this knowledge of the Gemini spell, and yet you yourself knew hardly anything about the Gemini Coven. And since the Geminis have no reason to harm a Bennett witch, nor would they throw a Bennett witch into a world in which her blood is the key to getting back out, and despite what you've said I seriously doubt Damon Salvatore did anything worth attracting the attention of the oldest coven on Earth, I have to wonder about how either of you got there, and how either of you knew to get out." By the time he was finished talking, the point of the sword was resting at her breastbone. Bonnie inhaled and felt the edge, razor sharp, pressing into her skin.

"You're scaring me," she accused, eyes blazing.

Kol's smirked only widened. "You know I'd never hurt you. It's not me you're scared of, love."

Kai's face swam in front of her suddenly and her arm flew out. The sword flew from Kol's grasp and was buried deep in the far wall in the next moment. Kol and his smirk were unmoved. "What is wrong with you?" she snapped at him.

"An answer for an answer, darling," he sang.

"We fell in," Bonnie bit out. "It was an accident. Then we figured a way out."

"How? Gemini Covens don't have grimoires and besides, you wouldn't even begin knowing where to look," Kol pointed out, voice gratingly calm and logical.

Bonnie felt the insane urge to stamp her foot. "You-" Then she realized what he was doing and gasp on a hysterical laugh. "You're just trying to distract me. Because, once again, the big bad Original vampire is a complete coward. Scared of a few bodies, Kol?"

"Insulting me won't work this time," Kol snarled testily. The two glared at each other for a long moment, neither willing to back down, and then Kol looked away, towards the mid-morning sun shining bright through the window. "I told you that some things were better left in the dark and you made me drag them into the light anyways. Magic is balance, Bonnie, and we _are_ magic. Your shadows are mine as much as mine are yours."

 _I cannot carry it,_ Kol had said, and she had promised to help him. She didn't trust Kol to help her carry Kai's memory; there was no one strong enough in the whole entire world to bear the brunt of Kai. When he had drained her, her mind chased her magic as it escaped into him, trying to reclaim it, and she had seen. Kai was an endless darkness that years of loneliness and emptiness had given weight and form to, and she could still feeling the impressions of it lining her every cell, pressing her down into the earth every time she thought his name. If she talked about him, that would mean that Kai actually happened to her. He wasn't a nightmare and the pain that she had been pushing down would have to be felt.

Kol was watching her carefully, head tilted and eyes wondering and curious. "What is it like – to go through life terrified?"

"You'd know better than I do," Bonnie shot back. After last night, there wasn't even a drop of remorse within her to regret what she said. But Kol merely smiled sadly and nodded.

"I do," he admitted quietly. "Quite the exhausting ordeal, is it not?"

She _was_ tired. She wanted to go home and sleep for years, no nightmares, just happy dreams of family and friends and safety. She couldn't let Kai haunt her like this. She had to stop giving other people, other forces, that kind of control. The fact that doing this seemed to be so hard made her a little disgusted with herself.

"I'll make you a deal," she told Kol. "You come with me to the theater, and I'll tell you about the Prison World." She stuck her hand out and tilted her head expectantly, her expression brooking no negotiation.

Kol regarded her for a moment, thinking it over, then his hand grasped her. "A deal, then. I look forward to hearing what will in the end most likely be a horribly dull story."

Kol brought along a book for the walk to the theater and on the way had her lift it in the air, sometimes high in the air and sometimes as low to the ground as she could manage. More than once she magically hurled it into parts of his body when his teasing grew too much. They reached the theatre in short order and she levitated the book into her hand in short order.

The corpses were still there, not that she expected them to disappear. Kol's jaunty walk slowed somewhat when he reached the first body, the woman in blue and green, and he stepped over her carefully.

"Do you regret it?" she asked him, pressing the book to her chest like a shield as she followed over the body.

"No," Kol said, inspecting the man with his throat slashed out, sprawled over three seats in Row Four.

Bonnie had expected as much. "Did you know them?"

"No. Random choice," Kol elaborated. "Well, not truly. If they looked particularly happy I was more inclined to choose them. But then again, a few of them were homeless, starving, might have even wanted to die."

"That should've been their choice," Bonnie said adamantly.

"Yes, I suppose you're right," Kol said amenably. "It is the greatest gift in the world, to choose one's death. Few are so lucky." She could almost see his father running him through in the shadows behind his eyes. Then they cleared and he turned to her. "What you're holding actually contains quite a few spells of revelation. I can't sense any magic here, and neither can you, but something in there should be able to sort anything out."

Bonnie looked at the book in her hands, reading the title out loud dubiously. " _Tales of the Asylum?"_

Kol hummed, rifling through the pockets of Row Four Man. "The witches' private joke. Anyone caught with anything remotely like a grimoire back then would've been shipped off to the lunatic asylums – and that was in a best case scenario, mind you. They disguised the spells inside other books. Go on, take a look." Finding nothing, he climbed the stairs to the stage one at a time and began examining the bodies.

Bonnie walked to the edge of the stage, placing the book down, and began flipping through the pages. There was nothing at first, just horrifying 1800s science, until she got to page 94.

 _You throw me out when you use me and take me in when you are done. What am I?_

It was repeated, over and over again, all over that page and the one next to it. She blinked hard, leaning back from the book, and turned to the next page.

 _You throw me out when you use me_

And the next.

 _And take me in when you are done_

Another. Another.

 _What am I?_

Bonnie's breath came quicker and quicker the faster she flipped through the pages, a sob somewhere in her throat. This couldn't be right.

 _You throw me out when you use me and take me in when you are done what am I? You take me in you throw me out what am I? Am I done when you take me in what am I? When you are done you throw me out what am I? When you use me what am I?_

She closed her eyes, squeezed them hard, and turned the page. She could hear her breath hitch in her lungs as she opened them.

 _ **WHAT ARE YOU?**_

The words were large and red and glistening on the page. The taste of blood filled Bonnie's mouth and she screamed just to get it out, sending the book flying away from her with a frenzied thought.

Kol was at her side in a moment, pulling her around by the shoulders just as she clapped a hand on her mouth to stifle her scream and the sob it ended on. "What is it?" he asked desperately. "Bonnie, what happened?"

She lowered her hand. Kol watched how it shook. "The book…I…" The vampire blurred away and she turned to see him with the book in hand, flipping through the pages with a confused expression.

"I don't understand, love," he said, looking up at her. "It's all…it's what I told you."

"But I saw-!" Bonnie burst out, then clamped her mouth shut, eyes wide and burning. Oh God, she was going insane. "I saw – it said –"

Kol's brow furrowed and he looked through the book again. Then, slowly, he brought to her, crouched down, and showed her a page. It was completely normal except for a random burst of French in the middle of the page that must have been the spell. Bonnie took a stumbling step back and shut her eyes.

"What did it say, Bonnie?" Kol's voice came. She shook her head, digging the base of her palms into the hollows of her eyes. "What did it say?"

"'You throw me out when you use me,'" Bonnie said shakily. "'And take me in when you are done. What am I?'"

She heard Kol rifle through the pages one last time then the thud of him setting the book down. "A riddle?"

She nodded, the rush of her heartbeat finally started to quiet in her ears. "Over and over. Oh, God, oh _God."_ Kol tried to saw something and she lowered her hands, shaking them hard. "What is happening to me?"

"Maybe the book had a safeguard. Maybe there is magic here and its messing with your own. Or maybe after a year of this, psychosis has finally taken hold." For that last bit he earned her fiercest glare and he grinned. "You're right. The psychosis has had you for years."

"Kol-"

"This world," Kol cut in, grabbing her wrists to still her. "Is one hundred percent certifiably _bonkers._ There is a flagon of blood that refills itself everyday so I don't starve. You're fine."

"I'm _not,"_ Bonnie insisted, but his words did calm her slightly. She took a few deep breaths and pulled on Kol's grip which he immediately released. "Do you know the answer to it? The riddle?"

"Not off hand, but I'm sure I'll think of it. At some point. I am terrible at riddles."

She didn't know either, but she loved word games. She was sure she would figure it out. Bonnie's nerves began to untangle from each other and she looked around, wanting to get away from her temporary insanity as fast as she could. "Did you find anything?"

"Didn't finish looking. Care to try that spell?" Kol asked, holding the book up. Bonnie gazed at it nervously.

"In a minute."

Kol sighed, hanging his head. "Bonnie, love, you can't –"

"I said in a minute, Kol," she said loudly, voice still trembling but firm. Kol stared at her for a long moment then nodded and stood, loping off to one of the bodies. Bonnie glared at the book, racking her brain to think of any revealing spells she might know on her own.

There was one, though she doubted it would work. Still, it was better than cracking open the Book of Bedlam. She turned so she could observe most of the theater. " _Phasmatos Oculacs."_

As she expected, nothing happened. The spell was designed to reveal magical objects, not spells themselves. She sighed resignedly, starting to turn back to the book, when she noticed something glittering at poor broken Ophelia's throat that hadn't been there before. She gingerly stepped closer, reaching a hand to the silver chain that was far too fine for the dirty neck in hung from. It burned where she touched in and she withdrew her hand with a hiss.

"Something wrong?" Kol asked from far upstage.

"There's a…" Bonnie steeled herself and reached forward again, tugging at the chain until the entirety of it was pulled free from Ophelia's dress and hair. "It was cloaked. It burns."

"It burns?" Kol asked incredulously, suddenly right beside her. Bonnie dropped the exposed necklace onto Ophelia's hideously crooked torso and stared at the pendant revealed.

It was two curved bars of silver hanging from a third, straighter bar. "What is that?" The girl probably could've sold this anytime she wanted and bought herself food for a month. "Why was it cloaked? You said they were all human."

"They were," Kol said. His voice sounded oddly hoarse and she looked to find a very shaken Original. "She didn't cloak it. This is the…this is the sign of the Kindred. This girl was under their protection."

"You mentioned them before. Said I could raise an army of the dead with their powers."

"Very powerful necromancers," Kol said quietly, hand reaching over to the necklace.

"Necromancers?" Bonnie said, alarmed. The corpses. The spell had left behind the corpses. "Kol, we should-"

"This cannot be," he was muttering, and then his hand closed over the pendant.

There was a moment of silence where Bonnie thought that perhaps she had overreacted and then came the most terrible noise. Bone scratching on bone as Ophelia's broken neck rotated until her dead eyes gazed lifelessly at Kol.

Bonnie was frozen in horror as the dead girl's mouth opened slowly and a voice that could not be hers began to speak. " _Aven…sa fuis…sa belise…de la mer..."_

"What is that?" Bonnie gasped, prying Kol's fingers off the necklace. Ophelia's hands scrabbled against the seat as her arms hefted her mangled torso up. Her head fell sickeningly to the side but her eyes remained on Kol.

The witch and vampire stumbled backwards as Ophelia stepped forward, broken legs bones grinding horribly. " _Aven sa fuis…sa belise…de la mer…"_

The voice was not alone this time. Bonnie turned to find Row Four Man rising from his sprawl, holding his throat together. The woman in blue and green sitting up, her front covered in so much blood the dress had turned black.

" _Aven sa fuis sa belise…de la mer…"_

Up on stage Horatio's body clambered to his feet while his rotting head on the floor spoke the words. Polonius with no care to his exposed intestines. Claudius, his skin unnaturally red from the poison he had drunk.

In their shock they allowed Ophelia too close and her hand wrapped in the fabric of Kol's coat. He stared down at it as if he couldn't recognize what it was. Impossible malevolence entered those cold dead eyes as her grip grew tighter.

" _MOTUS!"_ Bonnie screamed. Ophelia flew backwards, bones finally breaking through flesh when she landed amongst the chairs, but still her chant continued.

"It's a boundary spell," Kol said, broken out of his trance, pulling Bonnie close. The voice was legion now, the twenty corpses like an unholy choir. "We have to-"

He tugged Bonnie up and ran full speed. He didn't even bother with the doors, breaking through them and skidding to a halt on the street, holding onto her tight. The chanting grew in force and in number, louder and louder, until it stopped.

"What?" Bonnie asked softly, stupidly. "What?" Kol placed her on her feet and walked towards the door, only to be stopped by an invisible force. "Were they trying to trap us in there?"

"No," Kol said, voice equally hushed. He looked back at Bonnie and the world lurched horribly at the terror in his eyes. "I think it was to keep us out."

* * *

They started gathering at the boarding house around three o'clock. Not just Matt and Caroline and Damon, but everyone.

Kai sat on the dining room table, legs crossed, watching them all mill about. Damon and Stefan talking intensely, Elena giving Matt and Caroline a message for Bonnie when they found her. His two sisters group with their boyfriends as Josette went over the spell for the thousandth time, making sure the strength of doing it wouldn't kill her last two siblings.

Kai was content to stare at the lighter in his hand, flicking it on and off and thinking of Bonnie. He had bought a bunch of dollar lighters from the store last night and had already gone through one or two trying to catch another glimpse, but he hadn't seen anything. Maybe it was the prison world interfering, or maybe it was just that he wasn't using a candle. Or maybe Bonnie was dead. He preferred the first two options.

The voices faded to the background as he zeroed in on the flame. He didn't even need to say the words anymore. But he was met with the same darkness as before. He released the igniter and stuffed the lighter back in his pocket, looking up to see Josie's careful gaze.

Kai half-smiled and pushed off the table, sauntering over to where she stood. "Still nervous, Sissy?"

"Why would I be?" Jo asked, probably rhetorically from the expression on her face. "The last time you went to the prison world you came back trying to kill me."

"The last time I went to the prison world you helped throw me in there," Kai shot back. "That victim card can only be played for so many hands, Josette." His sister's face twisted in shock and anger. Eighteen years of being the good twin to his bad had prepared his sister well for a life of martyrdom, he saw. No wonder she fit in so well with this bunch.

"What time do you wanna start?" Liv cut in loudly before Jo could say something back. Kai slowly tore his gaze from Josette, thinking it over.

"I was going to wait until sundown but it's not really necessary. We can go whenever everyone is ready."

"I'm ready!" Caroline Forbes chirped from where she stood by Stefan. "The sooner we save Bonnie the better." Matt nodded on her other side.

"Sooner's fine with me."

They all turned to Damon, who, true to form, had a glass of whiskey in his hand. Under the weight of their eyes he grimaced, tossed back the rest of the drink, and placed the glass heavily on the table. "Let's get this show on the road."

"Awesome," Kai said, excitement and the odd nervousness filling him up. He grabbed Liv's hand blindly and pulled her along with him as he walked towards the center of the room. Matt and Caroline gave Stefan a fist bump and a kiss on the cheek, respectively, while Elena received two giant bear hugs from both before they came to join him. Tyler wandered over with Liv to wish them both well. His hand was tight on Matt's shoulder when he gripped it but the other boy didn't seem to mind. Damon swooped down on Elena, kissing her fiercely before releasing her and hugging his brother, clapping him on the back, then came to stand on Matt's other side.

"Kai," a voice said softly, and he turned to see both of sisters watching him, their faces serious. Josette stepped forward. "You be careful, okay?"

"Be good," Liv added, grinning slightly. Jo's mouth quirked a little as well as she took his free hand.

"They're depending on you. And so is Bonnie. You have to be – better, alright? Just be better, Malachai."

"Jo-" he started, annoyed, then clamped his mouth, her words sinking in. When he looked around the room he could see the anxiety and worry in the lines of the faces they were leaving behind. And they were all counting on him to not only bring these people back, but Bonnie as well. He didn't much care for any of these people, but if someone was carting off one of his sisters to some prison hell dimension he'd want them to be the best man possible for the job.

Instead these guys got him. Life was a bitch. He squeezed Josette's hand in his and tried to smile for her. "I'll try, Sissy."

She smiled back softly and then her face hardened, her voice slipping into teacher-mode. "And if you end up staying longer than three days, find some way to tell us, do you understand?"

"Yes, ma'am," Kai said sarcastically. She rolled her eyes, released his hand, and stepped back into Alaric's waiting arms. He turned to Liv, freeing the hand he still had wrapped around one of hers. "Alright. Rule number one: you absolutely cannot touch me at any point during the spell." Liv nodded smartly. "Rule number two: you absolutely do not stop chanting until we are completely gone. Easy even for you, right Livvy?"

"Don't be an ass," Liv retorted. "I've got like, eighteen years of practice on you." Kai merely answered that with a sardonic smile and turned back to the others. He tugged the very mangled Ascendant that he had been spending his nights repairing out of his pocket and held it in front of him, pulling out a small vial in the other.

"What is that?" Matt asked, dismayed, staring at the ruby red liquid inside.

"Bennett blood," Damon answered. "Remind me to send Lucy a Thank You card, by the way," he directed at Stefan and Elena, who smiled tightly.

"Hands, everyone," he cajoled. Damon was the only one to really understand, placing the tips of his finger on the Ascendant, and Matt and Caroline soon followed suit. Kai dug a finger through the plastic film at the top of the vial until it broke then dumped the blood on the Ascendant. "Liv, with me. _Sangima Mearma, Et Mos Mundo, Carcerima."_

He had already told Liv the spell, so she picked it up quickly, and their chanting filled the room as the air around the four grew lighter and brighter, until all Kai could see was white. There was the familiar sensation of be tugged upwards violently and then four sets of feet landed roughly on the hardwood floor of the 1994 boarding house.

Kai opened his eyes. Damon seemed completely unfazed but both Matt and Caroline were looking around in wonder.

"Seriously?" Caroline asked suddenly, gesturing wildly at the room around them. "This is the same furniture!"

"Your grasp of the obvious is inspiring," Damon said snarkily. "We need a plan."

"Someone should go to Bonnie's," Matt offered. "See if she's been there recently. Care can do that in like five minutes."

"I can," Caroline said, preening. She looked around at the boys, seeing the agreement on their faces, and nodded. "And I will." Then she blurred and disappeared.

"Check out the cave," Kai told Damon. "If there's any evidence that she actually did the spell, it'll be there." The vampire looked like he would dearly love to argue but sped off anyway, leaving just Matt and Kai.

The blond boy looked at him uncomfortably. "I don't have super speed or strength or anything-"

"No, but you do seem like excellent moral support," Kai said teasingly. "So you're going to help me perform every locator spell that I know and keep me from killing myself."

"Alright. Can do. What do we need?"

The two boys wandered around the house, gathering up the objects they needed, until they reached Bonnie's bedroom. "We just need something personal of hers. I used her grimoire before, but the spell didn't work, so we'll try something else," Kai told Matt, keeping his voice hushed for reasons even he didn't know. But Matt just nodded quietly and pushed the door open.

It was the same as Kai had seen it before, dusty and abandoned. It still smelled very faintly of the lotion Kai could remember Bonnie slathering herself in, a kind of clean lemony tint to the air. Matt picked up the tube where it lay on her vanity and chuckled gruffly.

"You know she's used this stuff since she was like, eight?" he said to Kai, waving the tube. "I think it was embedded in her skin after about four years. We were lifeguards together, and I could never get the smell of chlorine out of my hair, but Bonnie always smelled like this." The blond popped open the lid, sniffing lightly at the air. When he set the tube down, his hand was shaking. Kai turned away.

"I should've told Caroline to pick something up," he thought out loud.

"We can always send her back. Caro likes to be busy."

There wasn't much that was personal of Bonnie's in the room, nothing with a strong enough connection to make the spell foolproof – except for the lotion, but there was something inherently uncool about performing a locator spell passed down for generations with a bottle of processed chemicals.

Kai opened the drawer of her bedside table, rifling through the contents. Large and small candles, a pair of socks, and –

"Aha," he said softly, pulling the polaroid out. A family smiled out at him, mother and father and child. Complete and happy.

"Oh, wow," Matt said, having seen the picture. He came over and pulled it out of Kai's hands, staring at it. "I don't think I've ever seen a picture of Bon with her mom and dad together." On the bottom was written 'Bonnie, age sixteen mos.' "Will this work?"

"Let's hope so," Kai said, grinning slightly at the picture. It must've been easy with just three people. He remembered trying to squeeze in eight people, three of them below the age of ten, into numerous family photos. It had been a nightmare; the only thing that had kept him smiling was imagining murdering them all. But Bonnie was a cute baby, and her parents looked happy. He wondered what had happened to mess it all up. Well, not all of it. Bonnie was still pretty cute.

They trekked downstairs to find a pacing Caroline in front of the fire. "There's nothing there but about an inch of dust," she told them manically. "And it is so quiet I could scream. I have super hearing and I can't hear _anything._ Do you know how frustrating that is?"

"No," Kai said, completely deadpan. "I can't possibly imagine."

Caroline made a face at him and followed them when he walked to the large table set in front of the windows that he and Bonnie had done the locator spell for the Ascendant on. The map was still there, with the line of his blood that he cleansed with a wave of his hand.

"Attempt number one, then?" He asked the other two. Caroline perched on the other side of the desk, watching interestedly, while Matt stood beside him, eyes glued to the map.

Attempt number one was using a drop of Lucy's blood to find Bonnie on the map. " _Phasmatos Tribum Nas Ex Veras, Sequita Saguines, Ementas Asten Mihan Ega Petous."_

Kai held his breath as the drop wavered, then choked on it as the blood lifted off the map entirely, leaving no stain, and rose higher and higher into the air, reaching Kai's eye-level before bursting apart.

Tiny flecks of red liquid landed on the map, almost impossible to see. There was one right where they were in Mystic Falls, one in Nova Scotia, one in Portland, another in what looked like Manhatten, New York, and the last in coastal Louisiana. Kai stared at the map, wide-eyed and mouth open.

"What the hell?" Caroline finally asked. Matt leaned over and into Kai, looking closer at the map. "I've never seen a locator spell do that!"

"Neither have I," Kai said distantly. "That's…really weird."

"Really weird?" Matt repeated incredulously, straightening and looking at him. "That's all you got, Coven leader?"

Kai sneered at him, bumping him away with his shoulder. "Unclench, Donovan, I'm not done yet."

Attempt number two was one of the Gemini's own locator spells. He placed the Polaroid on the table, filled his hand with sand, and closed his eyes while he held it over the map. " _Phasmatos Tribum, Nas Ex Veras, Sequitas Sanguinem."_

The magic worked through him, loosening his hand around the sand so it could fall on the map and hopefully track Bonnie's progress and destination. When the sand was completely gone, he opened his eyes.

The sand was running along the map from where he had loosed it, to five different points. Mystic Falls, Portland, Nova Scotia, New York, and Louisiana.

"These must mean something," Matt guessed. "Obviously she was in Mystic Falls, and we know she went to Nova Scotia."

"I took her to Portland," Kai added, gazing at the map.

"So what are the other two? That's New York, right? And this is what, New Orleans, maybe?" Caroline asked, head tilted over to read the map upside down. "Maybe she's at one of those places now?"

Kai stared at the map, a pit forming in his stomach. As much as he'd like Caroline to be right, if Bonnie was in one of those towns the line would've led them straight to there. Three of those places were ones she had visited in this Prison World and the others…

His gaze fell on the sand and blood covering New York. He heard the stories, but they were just that: stories, to make the Gemini Coven sound powerful to the other witches. Who would dare mess with a coven who had trapped a ripper and her followers in a hell dimension for all eternity? It was a ghost tale Joshua Parker had told him late at night to keep him in line, but Kai had never listened. If he had, maybe he wouldn't have ended up in here all those years. And maybe Dad had been telling the truth.

Maybe Bonnie wasn't dead. Maybe she was just lost.

"Bonnie was there!" Damon announced, suddenly very there in the room. The other three jumped slightly, having not even seen him blur in. Damon grinned, near maniacally, and held up an ancient camcorder. "And she left us a present."

Both Matt and Caroline looked a little puzzled at the contraption as Damon brought it over, flipping open the video screen. "I've been rewinding it the whole time over. We should be able to see everything that she did."

He placed it on the side of the table that Caroline was, facing them, and beckoned Matt and Kai over before sitting down in the only chair over there. Caroline rolled her eyes, zipped away, and was back in a flash with two stools from the kitchen, one for her and one she handed to Matt. She smiled sweetly at Kai and shrugged.

"You're very mature," he told her, sarcasm dripping from his voice. "I can see why Stefan likes you so much." The smile fell from Caroline's face and she whipped her head around to face the video screen.

Damon pressed play. For a long moment there was just static and black and then Bonnie's determined but pained face filled the screen. " _It's day 278 inside this stupid prison world,"_ she told them. Caroline's hand flew to cover her mouth as she heard her best friend's voice for the first time in nearly a year. On the other side, Matt inhaled sharply, leaning in closer to the screen. " _I have two broken toes, nine blisters, and an ear infection, but I don't care."_

Damon huffed out what might have been a laugh at that, and Kai couldn't quite fight a smile. Broken bones and infections were probably small potatoes compared to the other prices Bonnie had paid, but her determination was commendable.

" _I have phesmato'd the crap out of this magic Canadian rock and-"_ Her smile lit up the screen. " _I have my magic again."_ She started reached for something just out of sight and when the flicker of the decanter caused some lens flare Damon actually did laugh.

"That's my girl," he muttered.

" _And when that eclipse hits 12:28, I'm going home."_ She poured herself a drink and toasted the camcorder. " _You hear that, me? Home."_ She threw back the drink, picked up the camcorder, and the screen went dark for a few seconds.

"So it did work," Damon surmised. "Then what the hell happened?"

"You're one of those awful people who talk all through the movies, aren't you?" Kai asked. Damon craned his neck to glare at him and the screen flickered back to life, grabbing their attention again.

The view only showed the woods, swinging back and forth, and they could hear Bonnie's labored breathing. Then it cut out again and Bonnie was suddenly in the cave, looking at the camera again.

" _This is it. I'm ready. And there's no one to stop me."_ Kai could see Caroline glance at him out of the corner of his eye and ignored her. He didn't stop Bonnie before. She was the one who refused to do the spell. " _I have magic, and the Ascendant, and the eclipse."_ The camera suddenly jolted and Bonnie appeared to trip and they could hear a crashing sound in the background.

" _What-?"_ Her voice came, and then " _No, no, no."_

The camcorder dropped to the ground, looking up at Bonnie, as she pulled out knife and sliced her palm. Above her the sky was alternating between night and day, the eclipse and what looked like the Northern Lights. Kai felt the skin on the back of his neck prickle. They could only vaguely hear Bonnie chanting to herself, trying to concentrate. The sky stabilized on the eclipse and Bonnie looked up, her voice becoming impossibly softer.

Her head dropped down, her face clenched in concentration and pain. Every once in a while she seemed to jerk as if hit but an unseen force. When blood began to dribble out of her nose Kai lurched forward.

"That shouldn't be happening. None of that should be happening."

The sky darkened, the Lights appeared, and then it lightened again, the eclipse nearly past its apex. All of the sudden Bonnie sobbed and a light flooded the screen. When it dimmed, Bonnie was no longer there, and neither was the eclipse. It was dark and snowing, the Lights changing from blue to green in the sky.

"Oh my God," Caroline whispered. Damon held up a finger, edging closer to the screen, and then they all heard it. Footsteps, crunching in the snow. A shadow fell over the screen, and then a woman appeared. Tall and beautiful and familiar looking, dressed all in scarlet. She leaned in closer to the screen, clearly confused, and the features of her face became clear. Damon sat up, ramrod straight, as the woman reached for the camcorder. Just before she made contact she popped out of existence and they were left with a view of the fading eclipse.

The camcorder went dark and the four were left in silence, before Damon suddenly whirled. The next moment Kai was against a wall, a foot off the ground, with red eyes and canines an inch from his face.

"What the _fuck_ was that?" Damon snarled, shaking Kai by his shirt. "That woman-"

"Damon!" Caroline shouted, rushing over to pull at his arm. Damon tried to throw her off but she just wrenched harder.

Kai could barely speak with the way the fabric of his shirt was bunching around his neck, but he didn't need to. He focused on Damon and watched with pleasure as the vampire's suddenly yelled in pain, dropping Kai to clutch his head.

Caroline turned to him next. "Kai, stop it!"

He did, after another ten seconds. Damon was on his knees by then. Matt, sensibly, had stayed back during the fight but now came to stand between them, opposite Caroline, the two blonds looking between both men in near unison.

"What was that, Kai?" Matt finally asked. "With the Borealis and the woman?"

Kai stared down at Damon, wondering what the vampire already knew. "There was a story the older Geminis liked to tell their kids – about a prison world they had made in 1903 to lock away a vampire gone mad."

"NO!" Damon shouted, shooting to his feet. "You're lying. That woman – that woman…" His voice trailed off and his eyes grew large and wide and sad. "She died. We buried her in the ground."

"I don't understand," Caroline said slowly. "You know her."

"She's my mother," Damon said. Kai sucked in a breath sharply. That bit hadn't been included in the stories. "And that – she's not –"

"Well, hey," Kai began. "At least now we know Stefan comes by it honestly." Damon stared at him dumbly and Kai sighed. "Your mom's a Ripper."

Damon fell back a step, hands flying up as if to stop the words from reaching him. Kai watched as the vampire crumpled in on himself, eyes becoming bright as flames. "No. No. I buried her, I – I know my mother. She wasn't a vampire."

"Damon, man," Matt said sympathetically. "She's on the tape." Damon's head snapped to him, glare fierce, but the human didn't back down, and maybe that was what made the truth finally sink in. Damon stumbled past them into the living room and to the couch. The other three followed him, crowding on the other couch as none were willing to sit with him.

"So that's what happened to Bonnie?" Caroline asked, when Damon didn't lift his head from his hands. "She's in that other world? How do we get there?"

"But she just disappeared," Matt pointed out. "If she'd gotten stuck there, why would she disappear like that."

"Well, the cave was similar but it wasn't the same," Kai said. "She might have gone to the 1903 equivalent of Mystic Falls." Still, he doubted his words even as he said them, glancing at the map on the table. New York was accounted for. But what about New Orleans?

But the 1903 world would explain the cold he had felt, and the fear. "All I have to do is find the 1903 Ascendant. Shouldn't be too hard."

They all glanced at Damon, waiting for his input, but the vampire still didn't speak. "Maybe we should sleep on this?" Matt suggested quietly. "You've done a lot of magic already and Damon-"

"Good plan," Caroline agreed readily. "We'll meet back here in the morning and decide when to jump over to 1903. Deal?"

It took a moment for Kai to get his mouth working. He saw the logic behind getting some rest, but he still felt like he was wasting time. "Deal."

Matt took one of the upstairs bedrooms while Caroline zipped off to her house. Damon picked up the entire decanter of scotch and made for the stairs, and Kai knew the vampire would be sleeping on his twin mattress stuffed in Bonnie's room tonight.

As for Kai, he pulled off his shoes, leaned back into the couch, and pulled out his lighter, flicking it on and thinking of Bonnie.

* * *

The whole city was watching them now.

At least, that's what it felt like. Bonnie had wanted to break the seal on the theater but Kol persuaded her not to, promising to take her to one of the Kindred hideouts. The entire walk there she had felt breath on the back of her neck, touches on her arms, whispers in her ear, and Kol didn't seem to fare much better, head constantly twisting this way and that.

"Can my secret wait?" she had asked him at some point, realizing she had a promise to keep. To her surprise, he merely nodded.

The necromancers, surprisingly, did not camp out in a cemetery. They did, however, occupy the bottom floor of Beauregard's Retreat. Bonnie stared up at the cheerful yellow house and wondered why she was so discomfited.

"It's an insane asylum, sweetheart," Kol told her softly.

Bonnie grimaced. "These are lovely people you pissed off, Kol. Really." Kol had no retort for that and she sighed. "Are we going in?"

It was a pleasant house, all light yellows and blues. Very calming, but she supposed that was the purpose. It had two living rooms and a positively massive kitchen.

"I'm checking the downstairs first. You are not to come down until I say it safe, understand?" Kol told her. She nodded and he zipped away.

Bonnie had never been very good at waiting around. She knew she should stay put and not touch anything, knew that Kol might actually murder her this time if she set something off, but her foot was already on the first step of the stairs before she could stop herself. She found herself on the second story landing in no time, magical barrier up and ready to hurt someone – something – if need be.

The second story was completely different from downstairs. Its walls were stark white and lined with scratches and gouges and smears of bodily fluids. The first door she opened led to a tiny room with bars on the window and shackles on the bed and she backed out quickly. It was all a lie. The warm and welcoming downstairs – how many had sent their loved ones here for help, fooled by first appearances.

The next three rooms were much the same, but the one after that had a much smaller bed, with a doll lying on it, and writing on every wall but one. It all seemed to be in French, and very broken French at that. Bonnie could make neither heads nor tails of what this poor girl had gone through, but some part of her wished that she didn't have to go through it for long.

The girl had only been big enough to write on the bottom four feet of the wall. Bonnie found countless bits of charcoal littering the floor and picked one up, staring at the blank expanse of white before her.

A faint buzzing filled her ears and her hand rose.

* * *

Another lighter sputtered out and Kai sighed, throwing it to the table. "C'mon, Bon Bon." He pulled out another and lit it, concentrating.

* * *

The charcoal grinded against the paint of the wall as Bonnie traced out the letters.

* * *

 _You throw me out when you use me and take me in when you are done. What am I?_

Kai jerked back, his finger slipping off the igniter and the flame going dark. What was that? He had seen her hand, writing those words on a white wall, but why would Bonnie be writing out a riddle?

His brow furrowed as he tried to think of the answer. He had heard this one before. His finger lit up the lighter again and the flame consumed his entire vision.

* * *

 _You throw me out when you use me and take me in when you are done. What am I?_

Bonnie's head ached tremendously, like something was pressing in on it. The riddle had to mean something, but she couldn't quite figure it out.

The pressure grew more intense and her hand spasmed around the charcoal. She knew this sensation. She had felt it before, chasing her magic into a deep and endless black pit of a mind better left alone.

* * *

Kai's eyes drifted closed, and picture grew more clear. He could almost feel the breath moving in and out of Bonnie's lungs. The riddle – he knew the answer.

 _Bonnie, let me in._

* * *

 _No,_ she thought fiercely, panic rising up in her. Kai couldn't haunt her anymore, she wouldn't let him. She was just going insane, that was all.

There was the incredible urge to fall. Her fingers trembled on the charcoal. She could have the answer if she just fell.

Well. Bonnie always had been terrible curious.

* * *

Her magic surged to meet his across time and space and Kai felt like he had been hit by a truck, but still he held on, focusing on the flame.

* * *

Bonnie fell for a very long time. And then, somebody caught her.

She came to consciousness quickly, still facing the wall. Her hand had dropped to her side and she stared at the new writing on the wall with dawning horror.

"Bonnie?" Kol called from downstairs. She heard him vamp speed and soon his was right beside her. "I am going to start handcuffing you to things. What-?"

She pointed silently to the wall.

 _You throw me out when you used me and take me in when you are done. What am I?_

Scrawled beneath, in her own handwriting, was the answer:

 _ **YOU ARE AN ANCHOR.**_


	9. In My Dreams I See You Again

Look, I got nothing other than inspiration for this totally left me and then suddenly came back. I am the worst. I know.

Songs for this chapter are _Signs_ by Bloc Party and _Wait_ by M83.

* * *

Chapter 9: In My Dreams I See You Again

* * *

Kol followed Bonnie as she slid down the wall on one knee, eyes still trained on the words written above her. "We need to leave, sweetheart," he told her, and his voice held just the tiniest tremor.

The heaviness had retreated from her head and she, foolishly, tried to chase it. _Kai._

 _I know it was you._

 _I'd remember you anywhere._

"Bonnie."

" _Kai,"_ she whispered out loud. Her breath misted out in front of her. Her lips were numb. Everything was numb, and she was so scared. _You throw me out when you use me and take me in when you are done._

Someone knew who – what – she used to be. There was something out there and it _knew_ her.

"No, I'm Kol," the Original said, aiming for charming and almost succeeding. "Come on, love, take my hand and let's away, yes? This place isn't safe."

"Nowhere's safe."

"That _is_ true," Kol admitted, hand brushing against one of her own, wrapped around the knees she drawn up to her chest. "But I imagine, on the sliding scale of vulnerability, with one being the warm embrace of your friends and family and ten being – I dunno, let's say the warm embrace of _my_ friends and family – that being _outside_ a witch haven is a least a point below being inside."

He was babbling, and the whole time he did so he carefully pried her fingers away from her knee and wrapped them around his own. Bonnie laughed shakily, gripping the pale digits tighter. "A four, maybe. Not so scary."

"For ones such as you and I, a four is a day in the park," Kol answered with a tight grin, and between the two of them they got her to her feet. Bonnie turned to look over her shoulder at the words written on the wall.

 _ **YOU ARE AN ANCHOR.**_

"I'm not anymore, though," she told Kol as they headed down the stairs. "I was, but my world – the other side – it disappeared."

"Very likely that sort of magic left an imprint on you. Perhaps that's why you're having so much trouble with your own – between the Expression, the ancestral witches, and Qetsiyah, you have quite a lot of scar tissue built up, little witch."

Bonnie's legs were still shaky, so she held onto his hand. Not that she was sure she'd be able to extricate herself from his tight grip if she tried. "Aren't are scars supposed to make us who we are?" She asked him semi-rhetorically. It wasn't just her lingering nerves making her shake, she realized; the house was freezing.

Quite literally. There was ice creeping up the banister when she reached to place a steadying hand on it. "Kol."

"I see, darling."

The wood was cracking and groaning from the cold by the time they reached the landing, ice creeping along the floor to the door, filling in the cracks and frosting over the windows. Kol wrenched at the slippery knob twice before giving in and kicking the door to splinters, leading her out.

She tore her hand from his to turn and face the house. The doorway quickly filled with a sheet of solid ice, an odd green cast to its sheen, and the windows glazed over. She could see handprints form and just as quickly fade away.

Slowly, the siding, the wood and brick, the porch, all glazed over with the same white-green shine, and a deadly cold filled her from where she stood not three feet away. She backed up quickly, into Kol's waiting grasp that pulled her even further away.

The entire house had turned into an ice sculpture in front of their eyes and she knew without him saying that there would be no getting back in. With one last skittering crawl of ice, the air grew silent.

They stared at it for a very long moment. "Well," she whispered. "We made somebody nervous."

"Nice change of pace," Kol replied in a mutter. "Let's go, sweetheart."

She turned to face him, caught for just a moment at the way the white-green shine of the ice turned his eyes nearly grey, and then a horrible scraping sound filled the air and Kol's eyes widened. She revolved on one heel neatly and put her hands out, ready to blast at whatever produced that sound, but froze as she realized what was causing it.

A long line was being carved in the ice that had filled the destroyed doorway, straight and steady and nearly three feet long. As she watched, two other lines joined it, both branching out from the bottom and angling downward, mirror images of each other. It looked almost like an upside down branch.

Kol sucked in a sharp breath and she looked back at him. "What is it?"

"It's a rune," he told her after a long moment. " _Yr._ Some people consider it the first letter of my name."

"Some people?"

"Well, I suppose if something was trying to scare me-" Kol laughed then, but it was hoarse and strained. "They wouldn't draw the more commonly used _calc_ symbol. It means 'well-being.' Would feel a bit disingenuous, right?"

"And..." Bonnie glanced at the rune. "What does _that_ mean?"

He grimaced and looked down at her, his eyes so very _bright_ in the light. The word came out of him like he had fought it every inch of the way.

"Death."

* * *

"Kai, man, are you okay?"

Kai groaned loudly, cracking his eyes open to glimpse the world hanging at a sickening angle. His body was caught on the overstuffed cushions of the couch, halfway between sitting and laying. Matt Donovan swam briefly in his vision before he felt hands on his shoulder, pushing him upright.

"I feel like a mosh pit."

Matt frowned. "Like you've _been in_ a mosh pit?"

Kai coughed. "No, like a _literal mosh pi_ t. And not those pussy ones you have nowadays, like what the fuck even is a Coachella. I mean like the riot-at-the-Satyricon, trashing-the-Met kind."

"Clearly hasn't affected your speech," Matt said dryly. Kai glared up at him through slitted eyed. "Seriously, man, what'd you get into last night? Your face is all bloody."

Kai's hand instinctively went to his nose and he felt the familiar texture of dried blood there. He muttered a curse and waved a spell to clean himself up and help wake his body up.

"I was -" He started, but his voice caught as his eyes found the empty lighter sitting just beside him. "I-"

He had found her. He had seen her, even if it was just a hand. _You throw me out when you use me and you take me in when you are down._ Isn't that how it had gone? A riddle. And he had given her the answer. She had let him in enough to help her.

He could still feel the echoes of her now, falling through his mind. It was different than it had been before, when she had tried to chase her magic after he siphoned her. Back then she fell and fell and fell and he would have to let go of her just so she wouldn't fall forever. Stupid, stubborn, brave girl, so morally outraged at his theft that she'd kill herself just to right his wrongs.

It was like there were ledges in his mind now, cracks where Luke's consciousness had broken through, places where emotions and feelings could get caught instead of disappearing like they used to. Places where stupid stubborn brave Bonnie could hang on.

His mouth had curled up into a grin without him realizing and now Matt was looking at him like he was crazy. "Kai..."

"I saw Bonnie," he told the younger boy in a rush. "I helped Bonnie. Everyone kept telling me the lighters were stupid, but I was right, like always."

Matt's bright blue eyes had gone wide. "Whoa. Slow down and explain."

"Let's wait until Damon gets up and Caroline gets here. I'm not big on saying things twice."

"You, turning down the chance to talk some more?" Matt scoffed, but he sat down on the opposite couch and they settled into an amiable silence until Caroline arrived and woke up Damon to bring him downstairs, where Kai finally relayed the whole story.

"I don't get it," Caroline said, a frown marring her pretty face. "What's the answer to the riddle?"

"It's 'anchor,'" Kai told her, a little perturbed at the immediate and identical dark looks that crossed their faces. "What? Are large, ship-stopping pieces of metal something we need to be scared of?"

"Bonnie," Damon said, then shook his head. "Bonnie was the Anchor."

Kai raised an eyebrow. "Bonnie is a _person."_

 _"_ To the _Other Side,"_ Damon finished on a glare and a growl. "She inherited it from Qetsiyah-"

"Inherited being the nicest possible term," Caroline cut in acidly.

"-Which meant she was what the spell that created the Other Side was bound to. It was...it wasn't pleasant, but it saved her," Damon said, looking down at the ground.

"Saved her from what?" Kai asked. Caroline looked at him, opened her mouth, and then her eyes grew wet and she looked away. "Damon?"

"When you met her," Matt suddenly spoke up, voice jumping all over several octaves. "That wasn't the first time Bonnie had died."

Kai felt his mouth fall open a bit as his brain tried to work through Matt's words. All that came out of him was a strangled laugh. "What?"

"She died," Matt said, frank but clearly still so painful to him. "The day before we graduated high school. Wandered around as a ghost. Let us think she was okay for the whole summer before we found out."

"Of course she did," Kai said faintly, trying process pretty, vibrant Bonnie, so small and getting smaller as her body wasted away. He had pictured her dead more than once in the prison world but knowing that it had actually happened-

He vaunted off the couch and began to pace. "But you got her back, clearly. By making her the anchor?" Damon nodded grimly. "Then – that riddle..."

They were just missing too many variables. Kai reached in his pocket for one of his lighters and flicked it on. "I can try again, see what's she's doing now-" Before he could get off one chant Matt snatched the lighter from his hand. "What the hell, Matty?"

"You passed out the last time you did that, and we still need to get to 1903," Matt reasoned. Then he frowned. "And don't call me Matty."

"Shut up, Matty," Damon said dismissively, nodding at Kai. "Give it a go."

Caroline stood up. "No freaking way, we aren't getting stuck here because Kai has an aneurysm from using too much magic."

"Um, it is my magic," Kai pointed out, but he was summarily ignored.

"We need as much information going in as possible, Blondie!"

"We're not walking in blind, Damon, I'm sure Kai has more information on it back home." Matt's voice was tinged with a tired frustration he had obviously cultivated over many years.

"It's one spell," Damon said, gesturing at Kai. "He can do it, can't you, buddy?"

"Not your buddy," Kai deadpanned, but it went unheard as Caroline gave an irritated shriek and marched right up to Damon, poking a finger into his chest.

"Asking a witch to overextend their magic to help you out is what got us here in the first place," she snarled up at the older vampire. "No more risks, Damon! No more bloody noses, no more passing out. We _need_ Kai. He's the only one who can get us to Bonnie."

" _Bonnie_ would do it if she were here," Damon snapped back, but his voice shook all over the place, which kind of ruined the effect.

"Bonnie's an idiot," Caroline said bluntly. "Who never looks out for herself. Which is why she needs us, and _we need Kai."_

Which, Kai considered, by transitive property, meant than Bonnie needed Kai, too, which was a bizarre and novel concept.

Caroline whirled on him, Finger of Doom pointing in his direction now. "You. What do you have to do to get us to 1903?"

"We go back home, I magick up the Ascendant, I take us there," he answered quickly, feeling a little nervous in the path of all that righteous anger. No wonder she and Bonnie were such good friends.

"Will that take a lot of magic?"

"Fair bit, yeah."

"Will it wear you out?"

"I'll be fine."

 _"Kai."_

He cleared his throat. "Look, your concern is as touching as it is freaky, but you've made your point. No more Vision Exchanges. At least not for now." Matt and Caroline nodded, and Matt, as decent and trusting as ever, handing his lighter back over.

"We should head back to the cave, the eclipse is around noon," Kai continued. "We'll only be back in the real world for an hour or so."

"Do we have time to make a few stops before we go?" Matt asked. Everyone's attention fell on him and he shifted uncomfortably. "There's some stuff at my house. My dad's. My mom burned it after he left but it should still be in this world. I'd like to take some of it. Baseball cards, watches, nothing big," he added to Kai, his brow furrowing. "Can you do that?"

"I can do anything," Kai said, his voice coming out strangely soft. Matt nodded and began picking his way around the furniture to the door.

"I'll meet you guys at the cave," he called. Caroline watched him go and nodded, zipping out after him, leaving Kai with Damon.

Kai eyed the vampire, raising the lighter in his hand. "I can do the spell, you know. It won't kill me."

But oddly, all Damon did was grimace and shake his head. "It's fine."

"What, seriously? Damon -"

"You once told Bonnie that she always came back," Damon cut in harshly, butane-blue eyes locking in on his. "I thought the same thing. That's why she died. Too much magic. Not just once, but a hundred times. Enough so that she convinced herself she was invincible. Convinced me, too. She wasn't. She died. The one time she didn't come back. I can't tell you how much that – that _sucked._ I know you can handle it, but the spell after that, and then the one after that? I hate to say it, but Barbie's right. Save it for Bonnie, Kai."

Kai watched him disappear upstairs, flabbergasted, and slowly sunk down into his seat on the couch. It was weird that they cared, but he got the sense that it wasn't really for him. It was guilt, for all the times they didn't tell Bonnie no.

He flicked the lighter on, staring in the flame absent-mindedly, comforted by the glow. He didn't even need to say the words anymore, just thought of her and closed his eyes.

He'd pull back as soon as it got bad, he promised himself. He just needed more clues as to how she was doing.

The pressure filled up his head again, making his ears pop. _Come on, Bon,_ he thought. _Fall with me again._

And then, in his head, so loud and so scared, the shape of her thoughts:

 _Can't be you –_ a fireplace overflowing with flames – _can't find me here –_ a large bronze brazier that smelled of brimstone and suffering – _fall forever –_ a theatre strewn with bodies – _can't get back up –_ a house made of ice -

A glimmer of recognition and a new spike of fear - _Kai -_ A man, not him, his age, but not, smiling, but not.

He huffed out an angry laugh. She still talked right over him, even with time and space between them. _Open your eyes, Bonnie._

He knew that like him she would only feel the shape of it, the sharp weight of his magic pressing in, and he felt her fear pressing back. He scared her so much he felt his heart nearly crack.

Kai needed to pull back, and soon. His finger, slick with sweat, began to slide of the igniter, to put the lighter and this spell away, when the blackness behind his lids abruptly shifted.

There was a map in front of him, of a city he didn't know, and a man, the one from before, leaning over it. The man he looked up to, who frowned at him and tilted his head and said "Little witch?"

* * *

"Little witch?"

Bonnie lurched, shoving Kai out of her head. What she thought was Kai. What she hoped wasn't Kai. How could he have found her, and why did he keep finding her? Was he checking up to make sure she was still miserably tucked safely away in his prison world?

He wanted in, so far in, but it would never work that way with Kai. His native siphoning abilities made it impossible for him to do anything but take. He wouldn't get anything she didn't give him.

So why had she given him anything? Why did she keep letting herself fall?

Logically, she knew Kai could do very little to hurt her from where he was. The worst he could do with what he knew was use it to taunt her friends.

But the best he could do...

She sighed to herself, not letting her go there, not letting herself believe in Kai again. She did it once and got a knife in the stomach for her troubles.

"Keep going," she said to Kol, who was watching her apprehensively. They were in a study in the Mikaelson mansion, poring over a map, trying to find a connection.

He gazed at her a few seconds longer then nodded. "As I said, the theatre is here." He pointed towards the small X he had placed on the map. "The Kindred Haven here. The Treme and Algiers covens here. The Treme grimoire also listed some other coven locations, I've marked them with just a dot, and before you point it out, _yes of course_ they make a pentagram. I've also taken the liberty to mark where the French Quarter and the Ninth Ward Covens make their home."

She took the small piece of charcoal from his hand and made the mark for the Human portion of an Expression triangle over the theatre. Kol sighed in exasperation. "Bonnie, love, we don't even know-"

"We don't know anything, just humor me, Kol."

He acquiesced, letting her trace the symbol for demons over the Algiers coven and witches over Treme, then connected the three lines, but even she could tell they weren't equidistant from each other. She carefully waved her hand over the lines and symbols, clearing them away, and looked again.

Kol sighed and gestured. "Might I?" She made to give him the charcoal but he merely grabbed her hand and traced an unerringly straight line between the theatre and the Kindred haven. "And from there-" He smoothly led her hand in two lines from the theatre and the asylum to connect at an unmarked place on the map.

"Where is that?" She asked him, looking up to gauge his reaction.

"It's nowhere. An old meat-packing district, truly, love." He released her hand and she placed the charcoal down, clearing the marks once again. Kol stepped back, taking a deep breath and shaking his head. "Perhaps we're looking at this all wrong. This thing out there, it knows we're onto it. Beauregard's might have nothing to do with it. But this begins and ends with the massacre at the theatre."

"We have to get back in there," Bonnie said, her voice hard and brooking no argument.

To her surprise she saw the same look in Kol's eyes. "Agreed. This thing is no longer content with torturing me; it's set its sights on you, too. I promised you safety, little witch, and I keep my promises."

Bonnie smiled through the slight jolt his words sent through her. "Oh, you do?"

"Oi, I try, love, give me some credit," Kol said back on a laugh, hand going to his heart, all mock-affronted. His smile dropped a little as their gazes held. He was terribly frightened, too, she realized, and out of his depth. "You should get some sleep," he told her. "On the couch there, I'm not letting you out of my sight."

"I don't think I can sleep," Bonnie said, even as she headed to the couch and laid herself down. It was suprisingly comfortable for 1800's furniture. "Tell me a story, Kol."

"I think the one owed on story-telling is still me, darling," Kol said, settling into his chair, gaze fixed on the map. Bonnie frowned at him until she realized what he was talking about and huffed, rolling on her back to face the ceiling.

"Promises, promises," she whispered to herself, and out of the corner of her eye she saw Kol's lips twitch up into a grin when he glanced at her. She took a deep breath, then another, then closed her eyes.

"Once upon a time," she began, then her words filled up her throat and she choked.

 _He's real,_ she told herself. _He's real and he happened to you. He's never going to stop happening to you. You will carry Kai until the day you die. Time to get used to the weight._

She inhaled and opened her eyes back up. Kol had given up any pretense of studying the map, staring at her intently now.

"His name was Kai. My prison world was never mine, and it wasn't Damon's. It was Kai's. He was sent there by the Gemini Coven after he murdered half his family. He-"

Her words trailed off, so reluctant to give life to Kai. "He wasn't evil. That was the worst part. He wasn't. He was a sociopath. It's not like he didn't know better, because he did, but he just couldn't figure out how to care about it. If he had just been bad, I could've – I don't know. But he felt nothing, not even when he hurt me. And he hurt me a lot. I wanted – it was so pathetic – but I wanted him to give a damn. Nobody ever had before, and he couldn't. I was the only other person in his world. I was his whole world. And he still didn't care. He stabbed me, and strangled me, and threw me in a trunk, and drugged me. And then, when it was all over, then came the very worst part. Because then he left me. Alone."

Bonnie laughed, and when it came out horribly strained she realized she was crying. "No. The worst part is that I keep referring to him the past tense when he's out there right now in the real world, and I'm not. He _is_ and I _was."_

Kol was suddenly by her side, briskly wiping away her tears with one of his handkerchiefs. "You very much _are,_ Bonnie Bennett. Fatalism looks good on no one."

"Whereas boundless optimism is all the rage," Bonnie countered weakly. Kol sat down on the floor and leaned back wearily against the couch and Bonnie fought back an insane urge to run her fingers through his hair, to make him relax for five seconds.

"There are few things worse than being hurt for no reason," Kol said quietly. "Did this Kai at least give you the dignity of having a reason?"

"He did," she said softly. "He had been stuck there for nearly twenty years and he wanted out. I should have just let him go. I should've gone with him."

"But then you wouldn't have found me," Kol pointed out, then he made a face. "Gods above, I owe this man a favor."

"Well, Kai owes me about twenty, so you can just pay me back instead. Skip the middle-man."

Kol laughed, tipping his head back to look at her. "I don't think that's how life-debts work, sweetheart, but I can appreciate that kind of mercenary thinking."

Bonnie smiled softly at him, eyes drooping a bit. Now that she had told him about Kai it was like a great weight she wasn't even fully aware of had, if not disappeared, at least lessened.

"Get some sleep, little witch. In a few hours you're cracking open an ancestral ward."

* * *

"You realize Jo's in the middle of a lecture right now," Liv said, her voice jumping all over the place as he dragged her along.

"This face, right here? Not my caring face, Liv," he tossed back at her. Getting back to the real world had been easy enough, but Damon had demanded they have a group meeting before going into the 1903 dimension. Kai, due to his forbidden foray into Vision Exhanging, readily agreed, needing the time to regroup and possibly siphon his little sister.

Liv snorted in derision. "You don't have a caring face, Malachai."

"Exactly!" And they both burst through the door of Jo's lecture room, startling the twenty or so teenagers and one very angry pregnant lady.

"Josie," he called cheerfully. "I'm pulling rank. Let's go."

Josette gaped at him like a fish for a few moments before collecting herself. "Kai, I have class right now-"

"Yes, and I expect thank you cards from all of them for saving them from it," Kai said, gesturing out towards her students. "I also really dig gift baskets. Those little soaps are awesome. Move it or lose it, Professor."

And that's how Kai ended up in the car with his two extremely irate sisters, Jo making excuses over the phone to the dean in the back seat while Liv rubbed her arm where he had grabbed to siphon and glaring at him.

"If I had asked, you would have said no," he said placatingly to her. "And I have to do two spells in the future, one quite large, so I needed the extra juice."

"I would have helped you with the ascendant spell, stupid," Liv snarled.

"We're headed into hostile territory, Olivia," Kai told her, the sterness in his voice surprising even him. He sounded like his father. God, he hated that.

He saw Josie lean forward in the rearview mirror. "You're what?" She hissed at him. Then into the phone: "I'm sorry, Dean, the family emergency is becoming a crisis. I'll call you back."

She ended the call and he let out a laugh. "Oh, my God, Sissy, you're so dramatic. It's not a crisis. I'm just heading into the 1903 prison world."

" _What?!"_ His sisters yelled at the same time, in the same voice, with the exact same amount of anger and shock. Kai winced. He was so sure he had already mentioned that part.

"Kai, we have no idea who's locked up in there!" Jo said in a near hiss.

Kai shrugged as he made a left hand turn. "Actually, we do. I knew a Ripper lived in there, learned that info when I became Coven leader. And Damon identified the lady as – get this – his mom. Those Salvatores just won't die."

"You think I'm letting you walk into a prison dimension with a Ripper prowling around?" His twin questioned incredulously.

Kai took the time to glance askance at her over her shoulder, then looked at Liv. "Have we not all kept company with Stefan Salvatore, the vampire who turns Ripper over a glass of spilled milk? Also, when did I suddenly become some helpless damsel incapable of defending myself?"

"The moment you became responsible for all of our lives, Kai," Liv answered peevishly, but he could tell she was already settling down. Josie, who had spent over half of her life worried about Kai, was still pretty keyed up.

"Sending you to 1994, where _you can't die,_ is one thing, but-"

"Sissy, we could be hit by a car right now, I could die on impact, you two would die slow, agonizing deaths, and Bonnie would be trapped forever," Kai said shortly. "None of those things makes me happy. But I can't do anything about the first three. I can help free Bonnie."

He could feel Jo weakening but she still remained ramrod straight. Kai swallowed his pride and met her eyes in the mirror. "Josie. Let me do this."

Another few seconds of tension and then she relaxed. "Okay. You're right."

"Of course I am."

"Don't push it."

They drove along in silence for the next few minutes until Liv, who had been staring resolutely out the window, suddenly turned to him. "Would it really make you unhappy if me and Jo died?"

Kai glanced at her, brow furrowed, and waved a hand in the air dismissively. "I mean, if it was because of me, sure. If it's because of some dumbass stunt you pull, I'm reserving the right to put some really awful jokes in your eulogy."

Liv opened and closed her mouth several times, trying to settle on a reaction, before she sat back in her seat and sighed. "Just no puns."

"Puns are fine for me," Jo added tiredly from the back seat jokes. "But any knock-knock jokes and I'm haunting you forever."

They pulled into the Salvatores later, where Alaric and Tyler were outside conversing as they waiting for the Parker sisters to emerge. Inside, he found the 1903 Ascendant sitting in the summoning circle he had set up, transferred there by one of the members of the cadet branch of the Gemini Coven. Kai did not envy that lady when Joshua Parker figured out what she had done.

Matt was the first to approach him, breaking away from Caroline and Stefan. "Hey, man, I'm not going to be joining this go-round."

"What?" Kai asked stupidly. "No. You have to. You're the only one I like."

Matt startled and then laughed, only semi-awkwardly. "Thanks, I guess, but a human wandering into a Ripper's world? Not smart. Besides, it's Stefan's mom. He needs to go."

"Dammit, Matty, stop being so sensible."

"Can't help it. I got all my crazy out early," Matt replied easily. "Drowned myself so I could see my dead sister. Bonnie saved my life. Bring her back to me, okay?"

He held out his hand for one of those weird frat boy handshakes and Kai grasped it, clapping Matt hard on the shoulder. "Doing my best."

Matt nodded and released him, wandering over to Tyler and Liv. Kai tinkered with the Ascendant as Stefan approached. "You sure you're up for this?" He asked the permanently brooding vampire.

"Sure," came the steady response. "My very dead mother is apparently alive and kicking in a prison world. It's weird. I'm used to weird."

The other member of the Gemini Coven had primed the Ascendant with his own power to prepare it for use, now Kai shot his magic into it to revive it, watching with pleasure and a small measure of exhaustion as it sprung to life.

"We're close, then?" Stefan said, voice rising hopefully. "Bonnie's in that dimension."

"Don't know where else she could be," Kai said, and even if it didn't come out very sure he heard Caroline squeal with delight and Tyler laughing in relief.

"I'm going to have to call Jeremy," Elena told Damon, both of them wearing million-watt grins. Kai told himself to remember to break Elena's phone.

"Caroline," he called, stepping to the center of the room.

"Yes?" The blonde replied in the same indulgent tone.

"You can't come."

Caroline scoffed indelicately. "Wasn't going to. Elena's decided she's taking my place." The last part slung out accusingly to her friend on the other side of the room.

"Elena can't come either."

The girl in question tilted her head, eyes wide and beseeching. "Why not?"

"For one, you promised to watch out for my sisters. For another, we don't know what kind of shape Bonnie will be in. I can't carry more than three people by myself, and if she's too far gone, that's what I'll be."

"I-" Elena said, and he raised his eyes from the Ascendant in warning. "Yeah, okay."

"See how easy things are when you people just listen to me?" Kai said, rolling his shoulders. "Damon, Livvy, get over here. Time's a-wasting."

"Three day rule still stands, Kai," Jo warned from somewhere behind him.

"Be careful," Liv said when she stepped up beside him.

"If something happens to me," he told her, and she shook her head. "For my eulogy: I'm a huge fan of dead baby jokes. Write that down, since you won't be able to tell the funeral home. Since, you know, you'll be dead, too." Liv shook her head even harder, trying to cover a laugh. "What? Jo will, too, she'll never know. Think of Dad's _face,_ Liv."

"Oh, my God," Liv said, biting her lip. "Just go already."

He wanted very badly, for just a moment, to tell her he loved her. But he faced forward instead, met the bemused faces of the Salvatore brothers, and began chanting.

It was cold when he stopped, snow landing on his eyelashes. Stefan and Damon weren't really dressed for the weather, but didn't seem to bother. Kai himself was thankful he'd put on a coat and knew a heat spell.

"Bonnie first," he said, and the brothers nodded, looking around as he pulled out the necklace Caroline had snatched from their dorm room and held it in his hand. Damon handed over the vial of Lucy's blood and a map while Stefan looked around. They were standing in a forest, covered in snow, somewhere north.

He hoped Bonnie was still in town. Despite all his doubts, the others' excitement had been contagious. He hoped she didn't flay him alive when she saw him. He hoped she still had the energy to flay him alive.

He muttered the spell and dropped the blood on the map where he'd flattened it on the ground, waving the necklace over it as he chanted. He watched, disbelievingly, as once again the drop separated into five locations.

"What the hell..." Stefan murmured, leaning over to get a closer look.

Kai clenched the necklace in his hand. "Do not fucking do this to me _again,"_ he hissed at the map. He wiped the paper clean and tried again, nearly screaming in frustration when the drop split again.

"I've never seen a locator spell do that," Stefan said, squatting down to get a closer look. "Here's Mystic Falls. That's – what, Portland? Nova Scotia, New York, New Orleans. Bonnie can't be in all these places at once."

Kai opened his mouth to tell Stefan he was an idiot and then stopped. "Bonnie's been in all of them."

Damon looked from him to the map and back again. "Mind explaining that one, Kai?"

"She's been to Mystic Falls, obviously. I took her to Portland. She went to Nova Scotia to get her magic back. She appeared in this prison world on the video tape, that's New York. The only one unaccounted for is New Orleans."

"So," Damon said, excitement nearly tripping his words on the way out. "So she's in New Orleans?"

"In this world or the other one?" Stefan asked, looking between them and the map.

"Judging by the things I saw in my vision, I'm going to guess this one," Kai said. Then he frowned, remembering. "But I saw -"

The brothers Salvatore looked at him expectantly. "Look, I took another look-see when you were upstairs," he told Damon, who rolled his eyes. "I saw a man with Bonnie. Brown hair, brown eyes, British sounding, called her 'little witch.'"

Stefan's permanently creased brow furrowed deeper at that, head tilting and eyes roving as he thought. "Little witch?"

"Sounds like he knows her pretty well," Damon grumbled. Stefan shook his head minutely.

"Sounds like-" And then he paused, both of the vampires heads snapping up as they became instantly alert and tensed. "Damon?"

His brother nodded once, speaking lowly. "To your left. I'll circle around. Kai, stay here."

They blurred out of Kai's vision before he could respond, and he stood there floundering.

"You two are the fucking worst," he spat at where they once stood.

It was so quiet he heard the twig break almost before it actually happened. He spun, hand out, to find the woman from the video. Lillian Salvatore, in the flesh. She approached him slowly, head tilted at the precise angle her son did just a few minutes ago, and stopped within ten feet of him.

"Oh, man," Kai said on a exhale. "Do I know some people who will be happy to see you."

Lillian smiled and his heart stopped cold. "Funny," she whispered. "I was about to say the same thing."

And then there were hands on his arms, in his hair, tugging his head back so a pair of teeth could drive into his neck. Fangs in his wrists, at his side and the whole world was spinning, a mad whirl of red and pain. _My sisters_ , he thought. _Bonnie_.

Kai screamed.

* * *

It had taken everything she had to bring down the ward, casting every dissolution spell she knew until she simply began hammering at it with offensive magic until it broke, and now she waited, tensed and guarded on the street as Kol darted in to steal the necklace off of Ophelia.

He emerged a moment later with the object in hand, and she winced when she saw how deeply it had burned into his hand. She peeled it out gingerly and nearly shrieked when it burned into her as well. "Still has active magic on it."

"Protection spell," Kol offered breathlessly, waving out his hand as it healed. His eyes constantly moved back and forth along the street, watching. Waiting.

There were whispers in the dark now.

They followed them everywhere, a murmur that could be heard but not distinguished. Everything around them tremored delicately, as if the world itself was threatening to fall apart if they kept searching.

"This could lead nowhere," she warned him unnecessarily.

Kol nodded, stepping away. "Won't know until you try, love. Just remember – it's your magic. Nobody can control you."

Whoever cast the spell over this necklace was probably no longer alive, but since magic in New Orleans was built on ancestral magic, Bonnie could still track its source. Whoever did this, whoever lost this girl, probably had a good reason for hurting Kol. She was hoping she could find some answers wherever they ended up.

She clenched the necklace in her hand and called upon powers she hadn't in a very long time. Tendrils of black crept along her hand and into her arm as her fist caught alight, the magical fire binding with the necklace. It hissed and sparked, and one of the sparks fell to the ground and shot off to her north, leaving a trail of fire behind. She looked at Kol and nodded, and he had picked her up and shot off after it before she could blink.

The journey abruptly ended a few seconds later in front of a beautiful house, the prettiest she had seen yet, large without being ostentatious like the Mikaelsons'. Kol set her down and they worked to tear the necklace out of her skin and she flung it to the ground, using the last whispers of Expression in her veins to heal the wound shut.

Kol finally looked up to where the trail of fire ended and then staggered to the side. "No," he whispered. "This can't be right."

"What? What is this place?" Bonnie asked him.

"The Dowager Fauline's house," Kol replied after a very hard swallow. "I – no, this cannot be -" He blurred and disappeared into the cottage and Bonnie had not followed two feet after him before she heard an almost inhuman howl emerging from within.

"Kol!" She screamed, rushing up the front steps and into the house. She nearly tripped over the body lying just in the entrance to the living room. It was a young girl, her throat neatly slit, her face perfectly serene as she stared lifelessly up at the ceiling. Bonnie slowly righted herself, facing a living room filled with several more corpses.

They looked so comfortable, sitting in chairs, one at the piano, a pair lying on the ground holding hands. She was up to seven when the sound of sobbing reached her ears.

"Kol?" She called quietly. "Kol, please." She stepped gingerly around the dead women and girls, rounding the corner to the dining room.

She passed an elderly lady sitting at the head of the table and a young man placed at the other end. Nine. Ten was sitting at the tiny table in the kitchen, holding hands with Eleven. She kept moving, into the hall and into the bedroom at the end.

Number Twelve was small, and blonde, and pretty, and so very still except for the rocking of the man in whose arms she lay on the bed. Kol was cooing to her softly, 'darling' and 'love' intermingling with his sobs.

"Kol," she whispered. The weight of his grief was overwhelming and she could only watch out of the corner of her eye as his rocking slowly stopped and he dropped a kiss on the poor girl's forehead.

"Mary-Alice," he gritted out. "My beautiful fool. Darling, _darling,_ please don't. This wasn't it, this wasn't the end for us. What did you do, love, what did you _do_?" He ran a finger gingerly along the cut at her throat and then, impossibly gentle, laid her back down on the bed, righting the body just so, making sure the curls were perfectly placed, crossing her hands over her stomach.

Bonnie almost couldn't bear to watch. "I'm sorry," she said softly.

"She -" His voice caught as a stubborn curl wouldn't lay right. He pressed it back again and again and his shoulders shuddered dangerously as it rebelliously sprung back. Finally he gave a wretched little smile and sat back on his heels. "That's my girl."

Kol climbed off the bed unsteadily then just as quickly sank to the ground. "When I rose against my brother, Mary-Alice was the first to follow me, to stand by my side. She helped me. Whatever I needed, she helped me. I'd never met anyone who would do that, not since Finn. I didn't – when Nik daggered me I would have thought he killed her, but he left her alive. Only to end up like _this_." He curled in on himself. "It's all my fault."

Bonnie hesitantly crossed over to him, kneeling beside him. "Kol," she murmured, pulling at his shoulders, turning him into her. "I'm so sorry," she whispered. She didn't know what else to do, so she coaxed his arms around her and his chin over her shoulder and held him just like that.

It seemed to take a very long time for the rigid set of Kol's body to release but when it did it was all at once as he collapsed into her, arms crossing behind her back to hold her tightly for just a moment before he pulled away, clambering to his feet. She followed quickly, watching him carefully, but he merely wiped at his eyes and shook his head.

"Astrid," he was saying to himself, pushing past her. "I forgot – when I saw Mary -"

He prowled the halls, looking at each corpse and growing a little more relaxed every time he didn't find who he was looking for. "She must have escaped Niklaus' wrath. She was always smarter than me and Mary put together." He chuckled, right through a sob and back into a laugh.

"Kol," she began. "Kol, there's twelve of them."

"I know," he whispered brokenly. "Twelve witches, twelve humans. Two-thirds of the Triangle. We're trapped, and someone murdered my best friend to do it." He turned to her, and his smirk was in place but it was all wrong now. "Someone is going to wish they'd never been born."


End file.
